| Author |
Message |
Donn Miller
Guest
|
 Posted:
Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:21 am Post subject:
Gateway notebooks |
|
|
Are these any good, or simply cheap junk? I bought a Gateway 4540gz at
Best Buy recently, but decided my 850 MHz Pavilion is still good yet,
and returned it. My impressions were that the Gateway wasn't bad, but I
hated the new Synaptics touchpad w/ scrolling zones. They were very
similar to the eMachines notebooks. Also, the DVD rewritable drive
seemed like cheap junk. It was some sort of generic brand, nothing
decent like a Toshiba or NEC. Also, I tried installing FreeBSD and
Linux. I succeeded, but the USB ports were detected as "USB rev. 1" in
both Linux and FreeBSD. Also, FreeBSD had a lot of trouble with the
DVD+RW drive, with messages like "MODE_SENSE_BIG failure" common on
boot. Most of the time, all it amounted to was a long 1 minute pause,
but sometimes I got some pretty serious errors with the drive which
required a reboot. Linux and Windows XP didn't seem to have the same
troubles with the drive, but on 2 occasions, a reboot occurred within
Windows XP when I was copying files from a DVD.
To tell you the truth, I prefer to stick with my older Pavilion, because
it seems like the older Synaptics touchpads were better. The newer
Synaptics have some cheap-feeling recessed buttons, and the scroll zones
suck. The rocker switch on earlier Synaptics models was better, and the
buttons, although bigger and clunkier, felt more solid. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Matthew Hennig
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:37 am Post subject:
Re: Gateway notebooks |
|
|
Donn Miller <hackr_d@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:351cnmF4gebngU1@individual.net:
| Quote: | Are these any good, or simply cheap junk? I bought a Gateway 4540gz
at Best Buy recently, but decided my 850 MHz Pavilion is still good
yet, and returned it. My impressions were that the Gateway wasn't
bad, but I hated the new Synaptics touchpad w/ scrolling zones. They
were very similar to the eMachines notebooks. Also, the DVD
rewritable drive seemed like cheap junk. It was some sort of generic
brand, nothing decent like a Toshiba or NEC. Also, I tried installing
FreeBSD and Linux. I succeeded, but the USB ports were detected as
"USB rev. 1" in both Linux and FreeBSD. Also, FreeBSD had a lot of
trouble with the DVD+RW drive, with messages like "MODE_SENSE_BIG
failure" common on boot. Most of the time, all it amounted to was a
long 1 minute pause, but sometimes I got some pretty serious errors
with the drive which required a reboot. Linux and Windows XP didn't
seem to have the same troubles with the drive, but on 2 occasions, a
reboot occurred within Windows XP when I was copying files from a DVD.
To tell you the truth, I prefer to stick with my older Pavilion,
because it seems like the older Synaptics touchpads were better. The
newer Synaptics have some cheap-feeling recessed buttons, and the
scroll zones suck. The rocker switch on earlier Synaptics models was
better, and the buttons, although bigger and clunkier, felt more
solid.
|
Go with a Compaq notebook. You'll thank me for it.
MH
--
Ten of Spades
Aggee Fedayeen Chief
Supreme Ruler of the Obvious
"We just got outplayed today. That's the bottom line. And we got
outcoached."
- OU Head Coach Bob Stoops following the Texas A&M game, Nov 9, 2002 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
J. Clarke
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:23 am Post subject:
Re: Gateway notebooks |
|
|
Matthew Hennig wrote:
| Quote: | Donn Miller <hackr_d@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:351cnmF4gebngU1@individual.net:
Are these any good, or simply cheap junk? I bought a Gateway 4540gz
at Best Buy recently, but decided my 850 MHz Pavilion is still good
yet, and returned it. My impressions were that the Gateway wasn't
bad, but I hated the new Synaptics touchpad w/ scrolling zones.
|
The scrolling zones are configurable and can be completely disabled.
| Quote: | They
were very similar to the eMachines notebooks.
|
They _are_ eMachines--Gateway is emachines and emachines is Gateway.
| Quote: | Also, the DVD
rewritable drive seemed like cheap junk. It was some sort of generic
brand, nothing decent like a Toshiba or NEC.
|
Don't know about the one you looked at but mine has an LG (one of the few
companies that's licensed to make and sell IBM heavy iron under the IBM
brand name) multiformat drive that is one of the few multiformat drives
that can handle DVD-RAM in addition to the more common formats. It's
certainly not "cheap junk" and in fact I would buy LG before I bought
Toshiba or NEC. Other than a firmware problem with some of their early
drives that they have since corrected with a downloadable update, I've
never had a problem with a piece of LG hardware. In fact their monitors
seem to last longer than the "good" brands.
| Quote: | Also, I tried installing
FreeBSD and Linux. I succeeded, but the USB ports were detected as
"USB rev. 1" in both Linux and FreeBSD.
|
Did you have drivers specific to the chipset used?
| Quote: | Also, FreeBSD had a lot of
trouble with the DVD+RW drive, with messages like "MODE_SENSE_BIG
failure" common on boot. Most of the time, all it amounted to was a
long 1 minute pause, but sometimes I got some pretty serious errors
with the drive which required a reboot. Linux and Windows XP didn't
seem to have the same troubles with the drive, but on 2 occasions, a
reboot occurred within Windows XP when I was copying files from a DVD.
|
Never had that happen.
| Quote: | To tell you the truth, I prefer to stick with my older Pavilion,
because it seems like the older Synaptics touchpads were better. The
newer Synaptics have some cheap-feeling recessed buttons, and the
scroll zones suck.
|
I don't notice any "cheap feeling recessed buttons"--the buttons feel about
the same as on my Thinkpad 770. And as I said before, if you don't like
the scroll zones then just turn them off.
| Quote: | The rocker switch on earlier Synaptics models was
better, and the buttons, although bigger and clunkier, felt more
solid.
Go with a Compaq notebook. You'll thank me for it.
|
Personally every experience I have had with Compaq has been bad. I'd buy a
Walmart special before I bought a Compaq.
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAQ
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in