Customer Reviews

Gateway LT2320u 10.1-Inch Netbook (Black Canvas)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I got my first computer twelve years ago. It was a *Gateway* desktop running Windows 98, and it was plagued with audio and hard drive issues, not to mention terrible performance, and Gateway support would not cooperate in getting the unit fixed or replaced. From then on, I vowed never to get another Gateway computer again. Of course a lot has changed in that twelve years, and after coming across this little beauty, I decided to give them another shot.

Visually speaking, Gateway's LT23 series is truly a breath of fresh air in this increasingly congested genre of computers. While all three color options are decent, the Pearl Canvas really stands out as absolutely stunning, which is why I chose that specifically. In any case, Gateway seems to have known what they were doing when they decided to impart a brilliant sense of style into their offering to help compete in these shark-infested waters of netbook marketing. I feel proud to carry around a netbook that looks great when I'm using in public.

Fortunately, those less concerned about netbook-fashion vanity will be happy to know that its characteristics go beyond the visual appearance and its quality permeates even the physical aspects of the machine. While in some respects, it's similar to the typical slew of other netbooks out there, there are a few specific points where this netbook really shines.

For reference, there are two different models of this netbook floating around (each available in the same three colors). The first has a 160GB hard drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003N1912G?tag=a52-20&ie=UTF8) while the second has a bigger 250GB hard drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003N19EDM?tag=a52-20&ie=UTF8) for those that need more space. That is the only difference between the two. Beyond that, they are both identical in their specs.


===== It's Comfortable =====

The Gateway is an absolute dream to use. Most netbooks are unusable to me. What stings me most with your average netbook is the keyboard. They tend to have tiny keyboards, or their keyboards just aren't typing-friendly. On the other hand, Gateway's keyboard on this model is smooth, comfortable and effective. At only 7% smaller than your typical full-sized keyboard, you really can't tell the difference unless you're actively trying to. Granted, I'm used to the low-profile, chiclet-style "scissor-switch" keyboards that used to be commonplace in laptops, but lately manufacturers have been deviating from that comfortable standard and I don't care for a lot of the keyboards I see on laptops these days.


===== It's Useful =====

Some laptops and netbooks have started to feature multi-touch touchpads, but from what I've seen so far, the implementation and capabilities of these touchpads have generally left a lot to be desired. Usually the multi-touch is limited to scrolling, and sometimes even vertical-only scrolling. Gateway's touchpad, on the other hand, supports not just scrolling (in 4 directions, no less), but has additional multi-touch gestures as well, such as pinching to zoom in and out of photos and Websites or quickly change font sizes in Word, swiping/flicking through photos in the photo gallery, and rotating/swirling which so far seems to act similarly to scrolling for me. In any case, I've found the additional gestures to be quite helpful at times, especially when I need to see things closer-up on the netbook's small screen size.

On the flipside of the coin, I didn't really care for the dedicated vertical scrolling bar on the right side of the touchpad. After all, with multi-touch gesture support there really is no need to have that on there. I'm also not much of fan of the rocker style mouse button. You have to hit in just the right spot for it to actually work, so that takes a little getting used to. Being that the Pearl Canvas model is lighter in color, it does tend to hide any smudges on the glossy, textured palm-rest, though I cannot vouch for the darker-colored models. However, because this glossy texture is extended into the touchpad, it tends to make your skin shear and resist dragging of your finger during swiping gestures (moving the mouse, scrolling, drag+drop, etc). Honestly, this tends to be a flaw on a lot of notebooks and netbooks I've used. To me, that "sticky finger" feeling is just about as annoying as fingernails on a chalkboard! Instead of replicating the same glossy texture of the palm-rest into the touchpad, Gateway should have given the touchpad a matte finish, making it more conducive to swiping.


===== It's Brilliant =====

The display is crisp and bright, and it isn't too shabby outside either, though I recommend using full brightness when being used outdoors. My only complaint about the screen is its native resolution is a bit low for my tastes, which I hope isn't just a personal preference. I'd rather see more on the screen than to see things big and close up. However, this is par for netbooks anyway. You should look into this Sony (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PII4HW?tag=a52-20&ie=UTF8) if you absolutely must have a higher definition display while maintaining the small form factor of a netbook.


===== It's More than Capable =====

This netbook does more than just writing and surfing the Web. (Sidenote: Do try to keep your browser tabs to a minimum and not install too many Firefox extensions.) Thanks to the Graphics Media Accelerator, media plays decently as well, including Web videos, Flash sites and Flash games. Just don't run several other programs at once, and you should be perfectly fine, as the processor is only a single-core, not so great for multi-tasking.

The 5-in-1 memory card reader is an added bonus, great for storing photos while on vacation--a life saver when traveling. The webcam quality is sub-par compared to most full-sized notebooks, but still a decent quality for netbook webcams I suppose. As far as Gateway's social networking key goes, I haven't used it since it doesn't support Twitter. That may be a shortcoming for you as well.

In the past, Gateway has been known for using Windows XP on their netbooks, but those days are over. The included Windows 7 Starter edition (not Home Premium) is a much more ideal operating system, as it is specially optimized for netbooks. It outperforms its XP-based predecessors in several areas, including usability, responsiveness, and of course look and feel. And to be quite honest, you won't even need to upgrade to anything beyond that. There's not much you're missing, since this netbook doesn't have a TV input card for the Media Center features included with Windows 7 Home Premium.


===== It's Media Friendly =====

The widescreen display has an odd resolution of 1024 x 600, making it nearly-but-not-quite 16:9 ratio, but it's still decent for watching widescreen movies on the go, with one very important exception: you must have an external DVD (or Blu-Ray) drive. I recommend this white Samsung drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002HMCAR0?tag=a52-20&ie=UTF8) which sports a sexy look, on par with the Gateway's own appeal, without sacrificing functionality. Video playback is generally smooth and very few hiccups in playback have been experienced. Even over WiFi, via a connection to a Wireless N capable router, such as the one I've been using (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LIFB7S?tag=a52-20&ie=UTF8) streaming Netflix works like a charm.

===== Processor and Battery =====

This netbook features the Intel Atom N450, a 64-bit single-core processor supporting 2GB max of DDR2-667 RAM. It does support Hyper Threading though (2 simultaneous threads), meaning some minor multitasking is possible (you probably shouldn't do more than two things at once). Try not to run more than two apps simultaneously for best performance and battery life. Intel Speedstep Technology is also built in, helping you save battery life. I averaged about 7 hours (and some change) using the included 4400 mAh 6-cell battery. This is definitely a steady jump in battery life over most netbooks I've tested to date. Recharging took me to about 80% within about an hour, and from there just over an hour more for a full charge to register and switch from charge-mode to plugged-in-mode on the battery indicator.


===== Praise =====

* Keyboard design - 93% full-size!
* Wrist rest - comfortable, remains clean & streak-free
* 3 USB ports (2-left/1-right) - handy for using a USB mouse
* Nearly 16:9 ratio display - great for movies (see above for DVD solution)
* Wireless N support - for faster and farther-reaching WiFi reception
* Windows 7 Starter - optimized for netbook performance


===== Dissapointments =====

* 1024x600 resolution - would have preferred at least 1280x720
* 5400 RPM hard drive - would have liked a faster Solid State Disk (even if smaller)
* Touch pad design - sticky fingers and rocker style mouse buttons are a no-no
* Keyboard key spacing - don't eat and surf, else crumbs can fall between the keys


===== Bottom Line =====

All in all, my list of disappointments with netbooks has definitely decreased with this netbook model. Granted, I haven't had to deal with Gateway support for this model, but as far as hardward quality goes, they have certainly redeemed themselves from their lower-quality days of old. Gateway still has a few flaws to overcome with their aesthetically pleasing series of netbook models, and they should indeed continue to innovate beyond their savvy for trendy design, but if style is high on your list, I think you'll be more than pleased with what you'll get out of this netbook.

I certainly hope you've found this review to be helpful! :)

The LT2320u is indeed one of the most stylish of the current generation of netbooks, but this little machine is not just a pretty face . . .

I picked the Gateway LT2320u after doing a detailed hands-on comparison at a local stocking retailer of similar machines from HP, Gateway, Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer, and Sony.

All the models I compared had approximately the same basic hardware specs -

1.66 GHz Intel Atom CPU
1 Gigabyte DDR2 Ram
1024x600 LED backlit LCD Screen
Built in 802-11g/n Wifi
3 USB2 ports
Multicard Reader
Built in Microphone and Webcam
Windows 7 Starter Edition

Here are the reasons that I picked the Gateway over the others:

Size and Build Quality -
The Gateway was one of the more stylish, slim, and compact units, while still providing a nice solid feel and full sized keyboard.

Touchpad -
The Lenovo S-10 Touchpad seemed almost unusable, while the Acer and some others had narrow recessed keypad buttons that were just not comfortable for my large fingers. The Gateway LT2320u Touchpad was very smooth and responsive and button bar was quite comfortable to use. It was easily the best of the bunch.

Screen - All the machines offered the same 1024x600 resolution. The Gateway LED backlit screen was definitely in the upper tier, very bright, with great contrast and color.

Webcam -
The built in webcam on the 2320u was easily as good or better than other models I compared it to for overall image quality. It supports resolutions up to 640x480 for video and 1280x1024 (1.3MP) for still snapshots (some models only seemed to support 640x480 even for stills). As is always the case with these tiny built in cams, there is some graininess and noise in low light, but the color rendering was noticeably better than some of the others (especially when the light source is CFLs or other florescent lighting).

Performance -
All the netbooks I compared had Intel Atom CPUs running at 1.66 GHz, and all seemed to have a Windows 7 "Experience Index" of around 2.4 (the `experence index' is a simple windows system benchmark for evaluating systems). This is on the lower end for Windows 7, and I have noticed that although overall things run quite nicely, there are a few things that are not quite as snappy as they are on a faster multi-core CPU system. The LT2320u is still really quick and responsive for web surfing, email, word-processing, video playback, and simple non-graphics-intensive games (pretty much everything except real heavy lifting jobs like high-end 3D gaming and HD video editing). The actual CPU benchmarks that I ran showed that, though the LT2320u is only about half as fast as my new Athlon 64 based machine, it is also almost exactly TWICE as fast as my 7 year old 600 MHz laptop, which is even more impressive when you take into account that the LT2320u also has 4 times the battery life, and about one fourth the size and weight!

Battery Life -
I can confirm that my LT2320u will run up to 8 hours on a charge (less with heavy use, slightly more with very light use). I obviously did not have a chance to verify the battery life of the other models during my in-store comparison, but all the models I looked at did have similar 6 cell high capacity batteries (with the exception of stripped down 3 cell models at Walmart; which mysteriously were NOT any less expensive than the full spec models here on Amazon).

Software -
All of the Netbooks I auditioned came with pretty much the same lame assortment of 'trial' software. For example, you get a worse than useless 'Ad-ware' version of Microsoft Works 9 which includes a cripple-ware word processor, cripple-ware database, cripple-ware spreadsheet etc. The 'Works' apps DON'T 'Work' particularly well at all, especially if you try to share docs with your office or others running the equivalent standard MS Office Apps (Word, Excel, Power Point, etc), and to make matters worse (MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, WORSE) they violate your privacy by sending everything you type to a web server so Microsoft can sell this information to the highest bidder. Imagine some poor woman using the 'Works' word processor to craft a letter pouring out her soul to a friend about how her man just seems to have lost interest lately, and finding herself assailed by a BANNER ADD FOR VIAGRA!

Gateway states on their web site that some versions of the LT2320 may come with the full (non Ad-ware) version of Works 9 (presumably in countries outside the U.S. where there are meaningful privacy laws) so if you are lucky enough to be in one of those locations, good for you. In that case I would upgrade my rating of MS Works 9 from WORSE THAN USELESS to SIMPLY USELESS.

As far as the 60 day free trial of MS Office goes; If you don't work for a company that insists that you use 'MS Office' (and is willing to put their money where their mouth is by buying you a copy), then my advice is to blow away BOTH 'Works' AND the 'MS Office 60 day trial' and just get the freeware "Open Office" suit from the Open Office dot Org site.

If you get the idea that I was less than impressed by the included software, that would be true, but since the other netbooks I checked were in pretty much the same boat as far as included software goes, I tried not to hold this against the LT2320u (damn sure wasn't a PLUS though!) There is plenty of really high quality free software available like OpenOffice, so, other than the hassle of having to delete this stuff, this need not be an issue regardless of which netbook you choose.

Support for other Non-Windows 7 OS's -
Depending on who's numbers you believe, somewhere around a third of the netbooks out there now are NOT running Microsoft XP or Win7. So, although not everyone will be interested in this information, there are going to be a lot of folks who are. If you should happen to get fed up with Windows 7, you should know that the LT2320u can easily be set up to run other OS options as well.

The 2320u BIOS has all the features needed to boot from USB, so you can easily load or install another OS either from a THUMBDRIVE or external USB CDROM Drive.

Windows XP -
Usually if someone is going to go to the trouble to install another operating system on their netbook, they will opt for Linux, but if you really liked XP ( and really hate Windows 7), reverting to XP is another option you might want to explore. Gateway doesn't support XP on this model directly, but at least the Gateway support web site does have a fairly complete selection of XP drivers. The only one I found missing was the GMA3150 driver, which is a bad link for some reason, but I was able to find it on the Intel web site. You will need your own valid XP install CD, but if you only have access to a pre-SP3 install CD, the LT2320u BIOS does have the SATA to IDE compatibility option that is needed to complete the install (once upgraded to SP3, you can re-enable native SATA for more performance).

Linux -
The Gateway website does not seem to have any official support for Linux, but most recent versions of Linux should support the LT2320u pretty much right out of the box. You may need to add the special 'closed source' drivers to get all the advanced features like 3D desktop effects to work, but they are easily installed. If you've herd about how great Linux is on netbooks, be aware that you may need minor tweaks depending on the distribution to get things working well, but once you do get it up and running it does work really nicely. Once you've seen Ubuntu or Linux Mint running with the full Compiz 3D desktop effects, even the 'upgade' version of the Windows 7 Aero effects start to look pretty lame by comparison. And that's comparing a basic free Linux install to the BEST that Microsoft has to offer for extra cash. With the windows 7 `starter' edition it's no contest at all. Nothing has done more to promote Linux than the dumbed down `starter' version of Win 7. (You can't even change the desktop wallpaper for crying out loud! Windows 95 was more sophisticated and had more built in features than the dumbed down Win 7 `starter' edition.)

One nice thing about the LT2320u is that if you're not sure that you want to switch to Linux right away, then it need not be an "either/or" proposition, you can quite easily have BOTH. This is because the factory configuration of the LT2320 makes it quite easy to reconfigure this netbook to let you selectively boot up and run BOTH Linux and Window 7.

Unlike some other machines, the LT2320u actually uses a fairly intelligent partitioning arrangement that is easily reconfigured to run Linux, without messing up the original Win7 installation. By default the LT2320u has three disk partitions. The `System Recovery' and `Win7 System' partitions are first, followed by the main `Drive C:' partition. This arrangement makes it easy to shrink the C: drive down to create space for a second OS dual boot without breaking anything as far as Win 7 is concerned (so you can have BOTH Win7 and Linux side by side without messing up any recovery features of Win 7)

Just to make sure that Linux does not step on Win7, use the built in Windows 7 disk management to shrink drive C: by about 10 to 15 Gigs before running the Linux installer. This gives plenty of space to load and try Linux, and later, after you decide which you like best, you can easily use the disk management function again to either put drive C: back the way it was and recover the disk space, or to give even more space to Linux.

A netbook is a highly personal tool. Some folks just want everything pre-configured to "just work" right out of the box. Others will want to tweak things to match their specific needs.

The LT2320u should please both categories of users, with solid performance in windows 7 right out of the box, and the flexibility to support more sophisticated capabilities when needed.

I have this netbook in pearl canvas....its little darker than the picture but looks stunning nevertheless...has nice design, something different than most of the netbooks available out there.

It's true the description about operating system is confusing but it comes with windows 7 starter. I don't have the issue like other reviewer because I noticed it before placing the order and called amazon and they cleared the doubt and also if you check gateway website, the description mentions correct os.

Have this machine for over a week now so really can't talk about reliability but till now its doing what it suppose to do. I am getting at least 7 hour of battery life on fully charged...only needs 2 hours or so to charge fully drained battery.
I don't think windows 7 is slow with 1 gb ram....after reading other netbooks review I was actually going to order extra ram but I am glad I didn't because I really don't need it. For net surfing (the main thing I do) and accessing data from my desktop on the network....this machine works great. Not as fast as standard laptop or desktop like I have(6gb ram,quad-core processor with win 7 64 bit and 1TB hard-disk)......but I guess you trade speed for long battery life, portability and, lets not forget, price.

I don't have external cd drive but installing basic softwares such as security, printer etc. was not a problem as you can go to manufacturer's website and install the softwares/drivers....later on activate them using your product key.

All in all nice affordable netbook that gets the work done in style.

This notebook its easy to carry, has a great size and it's worth the price. I do recommend it

This netbook is so slow that it is just useless. Just turning it off takes 5 minutes. It locks up constantly. Surfing the internet is a nightmare, because it takes the pages forever to load and any soft of .giff or multi-media on a website will lock the computer up. Others have great things to say, so maybe I just got a lemon. I would not recommend it to anyone.

I loved it until 2 months after purchase... something goes wrong with the keyboard and built-in mouse pad - it goes nuts and you have to do shift-F7 to lock the mouse pad off. What a pain. Other than that it is great. Ligth, portable, looks good and works great except for the mouse pad.

The LT2315 is a good deal for a basic netbook. It's got all the pluses and minuses of any netbook: the Starter edition of Windows 7, and the budget version of MSWorks (for example, there's a little ad window on the Word mode). Documentation is sparse, but most of it is intuitive. The power is great - the 7- to 8-hour estimates are reliable. It's very portable and has some personality. Connecting to WiFi is effortless. (Translation: You don't have to know a lot to make it work.) The touchpad can be quirky, but it's OK. The "gesture" functions work passably well. It has a scroll bar at the side that is very helpful. Mostly I use a compact mouse that I bought separately (makes it much easier). Because this is mostly for e-mail and Web surfing, I'm very glad I did not spend hundreds more for an actual laptop.

SO FAR SO GOOD, VERY PLEASED. I wish that you could add more memory to it myself, other than that it is good.

First, great price at Amazon for this Gateway netbook! I love the patterned design on the outside - it adds an elegance that is still durable. The matte finish on the outside as well as on the inside does not leave fingerprints or smudges like your plain, black netbooks would. I decided to purchase a Gateway netbook because I also have a Gateway laptop that I have been very pleased with, and I am pleased with this one as well!
I purchased this netbook primarily for work; I'm not in the office all day and the battery life of this netbook allows me to take it to the office without having to take the power cord with me. The battery life quoted is likely maximum with minimal, simpler activities taking place on the netbook. But overall, even when using it with more complex programs, the battery life is still excellent. It operates quietly.
Could I have spent less on a netbook? Sure, I could have. But I wanted more than just a basic black, plain netbook. Are other brands less expensive? Yes, but the beautiful case of this netbook and purchasing the Gateway brand was more than worth the slight difference in price! This is a beautiful netbook that does not look cheap and so far the performance has exceeded my expectations!

Besides the fact that it was a convenient size, this netbook, for whatever reason, ceased to function less than one month after the package was opened. There was little or no tech support for it and I ended up shipping it back to Amazon for a refund since they are now out of stock... can't imagine why (wink , wink). On a side note, the Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system wasn't a great crowd pleaser either.