Good old Gateway... er.. Acer

Eticket

Eticket

Pointy Stick
FC/Active Member
So as some of you know, I essentially bricked my Gateway P-7811FX about a month ago.

It took a while for me to convince them to take it back as I had installed Windows 7 on it and they wanted to make sure that it wasn't a software issue. (Because after all, a software issue would force it to randomly power down after 5-45 minutes of use.)

Anyway, I sent it in to them finally around the 22nd of August. At the time, I was told it would take 7-10 business days to repair and return it. I was hoping I would get it back in time for PAX but wasn't holding my breath.

So fast forward to yesterday. After sufficiently recovering from the flu I decided to sit down and call them to check in and see what the issue was. After finally getting through to someone, I was told they needed to replace the drive and entire board. However, it was nearly done and it would ship in the next couple of days.

This is all well and good but something seems off. The two days I've had several missed calls on my cell from the same number. Essentially, I've been getting one ring before the call drops and says I missed it. A reverse lookup gave me no real info, so I decided to call the number back and got Gateway. The lady who answered, happily someone actually at the repair facility and not in India, proceeded to tell me that they were unable to repair the laptop and were replacing it entirely with a new model.

Old:
-2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400
-4GB, 667MHz DDR3
-200GB 7,200rpm
-Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS
-Windows Vista Premium (64-bit)
-Intel P45 chipset

New:
-Intel Core 2 Duo Processor1 P8700 (2.53GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache)
-Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) with SP2
-4096MB 1066MHz DDR3 dual-channel memory (2-2048MB modules)
-500GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive
-Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS graphics with 1GB of GDDR3 discrete video memory
-Intel PM45 chipset
-Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN 802.11a/g/Draft-N Wireless LAN

Physically, the units are the same. Both have 17" displays with the same chassis. Really, the only negative I see is that the native resolution is dropping from 1920x1200 to 1440x900 and the drive drops from 7200 to 5400. I suppose I can survive that for a faster pc and 2.5x the disk space. It looks like the new model hasn't even hit retail yet either. I think I came out ok on this unless I'm missing something.
 
Losing that speed on the HD is a setback; but you gain increased battery time. If you ask me, I'd drop 80 dollars on the Western Digital 320gb 7200rpm 2.5" drive and put that OEM drive on eBay. You'll probably lose 15-20 minutes of battery capacity when unplugged, but the performance difference makes up for it, as you won't be waiting those extra 2-5 seconds for apps to fully load.
 
I was considering that actually. I'd been looking around for a 7200rpm 320gb HD anyway since it has two bays. I may just get two of those eventually.
 
I think you probably came out on top...

I'd much rather have a new machine with about the same specs than one that had been 'repaired'.
 
In general you came out ahead, but 1440x900 is a resolution that I had trouble with for FFXI. Overlays wouldn't work, so I couldn't see what I was typing, menus, cursor, NPCs or anything. I had to change the resolution to something lower. IMO that's a shitty resolution anyway compared to 1920x1200. I'm willing to bet it was an oversite on their part and they'd upgrade you to a 1920x1200 chassis with minimal effort on your part.
 
Fodder said:
In general you came out ahead, but 1440x900 is a resolution that I had trouble with for FFXI. Overlays wouldn't work, so I couldn't see what I was typing, menus, cursor, NPCs or anything. I had to change the resolution to something lower. IMO that's a shitty resolution anyway compared to 1920x1200. I'm willing to bet it was an oversite on their part and they'd upgrade you to a 1920x1200 chassis with minimal effort on your part.
Click to expand...

None of their laptops are produced with 1920x1200 anymore it seems so I don't think there's an option.
 
I'm a big fan of higher disk speeds, to the point that I'm tempted to personally buy a SSD for my work laptop just so the drive doesn't thrash around so much. People love to look at the steep declines shown in GB/$ graphs, but have you ever looked at latency improvements? It's nowhere close. I really hope the industry stops its obsession with capacity and works harder on performance.

So chalk that up as a vote for a 7200 RPM drive, if not all the way to an SSD.

Screen resolution is also a sore point with me. Our reasonably new LCDs are all 1440x900, and I dearly miss the extra vertical resolution.

I don't think you're getting a bad deal necessarily, but those tradeoffs would be painful given my usage patterns.
 
It looks like the new one showed up today. It seems they followed through and did send me the new laptop. As far as Eden can tell it's fresh off the assembly line.

I'm leaning towards swapping the drive. I'll play with it a bit tonight and see how it performs and go from there I think.
 
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