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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great price; great product, July 21, 2009
This review is from: Gateway NV5213u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Overall, it's a great purchase. I couldn't find anything comparable to this laptop in this price-range. It is great for watching movies, surfing the web, doing work, or even playing some games. This is not, however, a gamer's laptop. It was not built to run top-of-the-line games smoothly or with pristine graphics.
This product has lived up to all of my expectations. It's very light for a 15.6" laptop weighing in at around 6lbs. The fans are quiet; both vents are on the left side of the laptop, one vent at the front, the other at the back. The screen is beautiful and the lid is a dark-blue with a honeycomb pattern.
Like others have mentioned, at first I was unable to successfully burn recovery discs. The solution to the problem is to download and install eRy4003008.zip from the Gateway support site. It is an updated version of the recovery software the laptop uses to burn these discs and once installed, I was able to burn them without a problem. I will note, that as of 7/21/09, Gateway does not have any support specific to the NV series of notebooks on it's website. I reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows 7 RC along with all the drivers from the recovery discs. The laptop runs Windows 7 wonderfully.
The battery is pretty good. In Power Saver mode, I'm able to browse the internet over wifi for almost 3hours without having to plug-in. I haven't run the battery down from 100% in either of the other two modes (balance and high performance) so I can't give an up-time estimate.
The touchpad works as it should, but the click-bar takes some getting used to. It's one long bar, but it does have an individual left- and right-click function and both can be pressed simultaneously. The touchpad also has a scroll-zone along the bottom and the right sides.
If purchased between 6/26/09 and 1/31/10, this laptop is eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7 through Gateway.
I would definitely recommend this laptop to others, in fact I already have. I love it.
I hope others find this review helpful. There was (and still is) a severe lack of reviews on this laptop when I was considering it for purchase.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great laptop, but be aware: Customer Service is Clueless, July 7, 2009
This review is from: Gateway NV5213u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Excellent laptop, very feature packed for a good price. Stripped Vista off and installed Windows 7 RC and it's working great. Mine didn't come with a slip in the box for the free Windows 7 upgrade, but you can find their official order page at [...] I put in my S/N and it was confirmed as a valid unit and purchase.
The keyboard takes a little getting used to with it's flat profile keys and the loooong one-peice click bar for the touch pad. After using it for a week it feels fine now, but I can see how that setup might be annoying for some people. Try one out at a local store like Best Buy and see what you think.
Screen is gorgeous and eye-popping, though you still have to deal with the nice glare that all of those glossy screens get. DVD burner works great, though it can get a little noisy at high-speeds. Can't comment on any of the preinstalled apps, since I quickly reformatted and installed W7 RC, but it looked like it had the usual OEM bloatware on it.
My only complaint seems to be the same as everyone else, the support for this series of laptop (NV series) is horrendous. The website has no documentation, drivers, or support for the series what-so-ever, and CS can't give me any estimate as to when they'll be available. I tried entering my S/N into the My Support section of their website, and it comes back as unrecognized, meaning they don't have any support setup for these laptops yet.
And honestly, customer support in general is a joke. Don't bother with the email and chat support, if you need to contact them, just call. I've gone through Chat, Email, and Phone, and in all three cases, the reps were completely clueless, in most cases had no idea what I was even asking for, and simply used pre-written responses. The worst was the email, where I asked them if they had an estimated date when drivers and support docs would be available for the NV series on their website, and I received a response telling me to burn a recovery CD.
Prior to wiping the preinstalled Vista, I couldn't get the recovery discs to burn either, so I'm just going to wait for them to come available through the Purchase Program Website (don't worry, it's free if the unit is still under warranty): [...] Just keep checking back till they are avaiable. In the meantime, if you do need to roll back to the default installation, the image is stored on a hidden partition that you can Restore from at any time by booting into a recovery console during POST. Just make sure you remember that partition is there if you ever reformat your drive or install another OS and leave it be.
I would have given the laptop a 3-Star score, but with the hidden partition still intact for a full system restore if I need it, the only thing I'm really missing is the pre-installed drivers and apps. Fortunately, they are not much of a concern for me since it's been running great with the drivers provided by W7 RC and a couple others I downloaded for the videocard and such, and I really don't care for all of the pre-installed gateway bloatware anyway. So I gave it a 4-Star score because at its price point it is a pretty sweet peice of hardware, even if Gateway Support isn't aware that it's out on the market yet ;-)
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Nice cheap laptop, terrible tech support, September 30, 2009
This review is from: Gateway NV5213u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Approximately one month after purchasing this computer it stopped working. Up until that point it had been fine and I had been happy with how it was working for the money I had spent on it. It had a technical issue where the battery would not charge and the computer could not get power from the adapter. I could not turn it on at all. Since it was covered by the warranty, I decided to contact Gateway.
First of all, you can only contact customer service online. You can't call, only chat. This presents an issue if your computer is not working and you don't have another backup computer handy. That said, if you buy a Gateway computer, it's probably wise to have a backup ready.
I understand that broken English is par for the course when it comes to tech support, so that didn't bother me much. However, the people I was forced to chat with were so slow to respond that gateway's own chat client kept shutting down due to inactivity! I had to log on three times and each time explain everything the person before had told me. This took a total of 5.5 hours just to get the address to send the computer to for service.
The first tech support person told me that I should go out and buy another adapter to see if the one I had was the issue. He said that if it was, they would send me another one. Since i didn't have a 19Volt adapter with the specific gateway end on it I went out and got one, only to find that it wasn't the problem. So now, I own two adapters for my broken computer. The second person I "spoke" with again timed out while asking me questions about what the first person had asked me to do. The third person told me that the warranty would NOT cover the situation and that I should send them $199.00. I told the person that the previous 2 tech support people had both said that it was covered and after a 10 minute pause (during which I had to keep tying to stop the chat client from timing out) he informed me that he was wrong and that I did not in fact have to send money.
However, I did have to pay to send my computer to Texas. It has to be wrapped very specifically (3-5" of protective wrap, no packing peanuts, etc etc), and they tell you that it should be insured and not sent by the USPS. It cost me $61.00 to send it including the money for the special protective box. Honestly a total nightmare.
When a Dell I purchased had a broken speaker I called tech support and the next day a special packing container arrived from UPS. I just put the laptop inside it and handed it back to the courier. They fixed it and got it back to me with no money spent on my part and almost not fuss at all.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make with all this is that if you buy one of these laptops you had better hope (against the odds) that it doesn't break. I definitely got the sense that my experience was not at all unusual for people dealing with this company.
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