First Impressions of the 11.6-Inch Gateway LT3100 with AMD Inside

June 23rd, 2009 by Joanna Stern  

gateway2lead1There may be reports that Acer is skeptical about putting out its 11.6 inch Aspire One on shelves, but its brother Gateway seems to be sliding into the same space. However, Gateway also seems to be shaking up the specs on the inside of its 11.6-inch LT3100 by forgoing an Intel solution (nor Atom or CULV) for an AMD Athlon processor.

The Gateway LT3103u will be available at Best Buy, according to the company’s site, and will start for $399. It will be outfitted with a 1.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 CPU, ATI Radeon X1270 graphics, Windows Vista Home Basic SP1, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.

We caught a glimpse of the LT3100′s hardware at Computex earlier this month. The chassis while very similar to the 11.6-inch Acer Aspire One  has a few key differences. Firstly the lid is styled after Gateway’s MD or MC Series. The glossy black and red units that were on display have a silver buckle centered on the top of the lid. Nevertheless, it has the same compact build and is 1.03-inches thick and weighs just about 3 pounds.

Underneath the lid the LT3100 has the same 11.6 1366 x 768 resolution, LED-backlit display as the Acer. It also has the same  full size keyboard which is quite comfortable; we like the small spacing between the flat keys. The trackpad is styled slightly different, and has a scroll bar and silver, single mouse button. We are looking forward to testing the LT3100 especially given its AMD organs.

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10 Responses to “First Impressions of the 11.6-Inch Gateway LT3100 with AMD Inside”

  1. Fanfoot Says:
    June 24th, 2009 at 1:18 am

    Yup. Very interested. Looks nice and priced right. Since all the other 11-inchers are shipping with the ridiculous 1.2GHz Z-series Atom, this might be the only one that is actually viable.

    I’ll be very interested in what you have to say about the performance of the 1.2GHz Athlon compared to a typical 1.6GHz Atom. Battery life too of course.

  2. Pierre Says:
    June 28th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    When are you guys planning to review this laptop? I’m very interested thanks to the bigger screen and reasonable cost for a non-Atom solution.

  3. davidnotdave Says:
    July 5th, 2009 at 11:04 pm

    I just bought one of these at Best Buy for my wife. She hates my Samsung NC10 due to the screen size (too small) and the trackpad(also too small). Last night I went through it and took off all the crapware and got it setup for her. Today she messed with for the first time and is very happy. Likes the screen, the trackpad nad the size overall.

    I fooled around today and with the high performance setting got a legit 4 hours before plugging it back in. The battery showed about another 1 hour and 26 minutes. Now this might be a flook, but I will keep at it to make sure we have at least 5-6 hours on the 6-cell battery.

    The screen resolution is just great and video can be run on HD with no apparent problems. All in all this is a good solution for those that find the 10.2 screen size just too small.

    Davidnotdave

  4. James Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 7:24 am

    What’s taking you guys so long to review this netbook? It’s among the hottest contendors among other 11.6 inchers (Acer 751, Asus 1101HA, Timeline 1810 etc)

  5. TC Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    I too have to ask; What is taking so long to review this netbook? This is the only netbook sporting an AMD processor. We’re all waiting to see how it stacks up against the competition.

    By the time your review get posted, Gateway will be coming out with its next generation netbook.

  6. JamesT Says:
    July 28th, 2009 at 7:34 am

    Yes, I third that!!! Please review this netbook and if it is not too much to ask suggest wordarounds for the its shortcomings, if any (it’s a netbook, duh!) :)

  7. LouD Says:
    August 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    I just saw this at Best Buy today. Looks very interesting. I’d like to see a nose to nose comparison with the new Dell 11z. How does it compare. The 11.6 seems to be a good middle ground. I’m thinking I’ll wait until the Chistmas shopping season and hopefully both of these will be loaded with Windows 7 then. The Dell has Vista Premium so it is eligible for the upgrade. After seeing the Gateway I’m leaning toward it but want it with Windows 7, but maybe the Dell will be a better option? I’d like to see reviews of both ASAP.

  8. Ricardo Says:
    September 1st, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    I’m using this one since 19th Aug. And I’m loving it.
    I made the restore dvds and after removed the disgusting Windows Vista, installed Ubuntu. It is performing really great. Microphone, camara, sound… everything worked out of the box.
    The only problem was with the wifi. I needed to upgrade to a newer kernel to make it function. It took me 10 minutes.
    I’m really impressed with the preformance of the processor.

  9. Dave Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    I bought this notebook last week and installed Windows 7 RC on this marvelous Netbook. For this price (379$ Can), it’s a bargain. I love it better then the Acer Aspire, mainly because the keyboard size is larger and the screen resolution of this machine is larger (support up to 1366×768). I installed Ti-Took (titook.net) web browser on this marvelous machine and it works almost as well as my Lenovo Tablet X61!

  10. justin Says:
    October 25th, 2009 at 11:24 pm

    Love this netbook, but am having problems with the wifi as well. I cant connect to any wifi network?? wtf?

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