Gateway LT Series LT4010U Intel Atom N2600 X2 1.6GHz 1GB 320GB 10.1" Win7 Starter (River Black)

Gateway LT Series LT4010u

I was looking for a very compact computer to easily carry around with me. I didn't need a powerhouse as I have a desktop and a very powerful Asus laptop for when I need a workhorse.

I wanted something that I could use for email, to surf the net, save photos on and create documents. I also wanted something light and small to keep a version of Bible Explorer on, so I could keep my library of Christian books at my fingertips.

I should also mention that I am not a fan of tabletsI especially don't like touch-screens. I was given a rather expensive tablet ($800) for work & I have absolutely no use for it. So I decided to swim against the tide of the ever growing tablet popularity and purchase a netbook.

I looked at many, many netbooks and found that for the price you couldn't do much better than this little Gateway (Acer) LT 4010u. Even with its little Intel Atom N2600 processor & just 1GB of RAM I find it to be plenty quick (for comparison my Asus has an Intel Core i7 processor & 8GBs of RAM). I should mention for those who want more RAM that the 4010u is expandable to 2GB RAM, but I wouldn't attempt to disassemble to get to the card (nor do I see a need to expand to 2GB). I also found the 320G hard drive a pleasant surprise. I'm sure the fact that the 4010u comes with just the (non-power sapping) Windows 7 Starter part of the reason I don't find this little netbook to be slow at all. The Windows 7 Starter may be a fairly basic operating system, but it is perfectly fine for a netbook, so no complaints here.

I find the 10.1" display excellent bright, clear & crisp dispay for viewing photos, watching videos, or reading the Bible or books in my Christian library. This little dynamo seems to do everything well. The fact that this netbook comes equipped with niceties such as three 2.0 USB ports, a webcam, and a 6-in-1 memory card reader all pluses. The 3-cell lithium-ion battery is said to provide up to 4 hours of battery life, however you can purchase a 6 cell (which should provide about 8 hours per charge) from Gateway Accessories for just $49.99 plus tax & shipping.

In short, for the money, this is an excellent little value-packed netbook. I am very pleased with my purchase. In fact so pleased with its performance, features & fantastic price that we ended up buying three of these great little netbooks for the family (surprisingly, the total cost of three of these netbooks all with extended warranties still was less the cost of my 14" Asus U46 in fact the price of each Gateway LT 4010u netbook was only $28.01 more than the cost of the two-year warranty ALONE on the Asus). Imagine that, a wonderful little feature packed netbook for just $28.01 more than the cost of a two year warranty on a laptop!

I also should add that we also find Gateway/Acer Customer Service excellent. They are easy to reach, and you can do a live on-screen chat for any questions you might have, be it about the netbook itself, available accessories etc. Also purchasing parts & accessories is a snap, & the prices are very reasonable ($49.99 for the 6 cell battery, for example), and shipping is prompt. I'm a careful shopper, in that I do a lot of research before making a purchase & I'm very picky when it comes to computers, yet without any reservations or hesitation I highly recommend the Gateway LT 4010u Netbook.

I'm not very computer savy but I read some reviews online before I bought. Most were positive but there were a few that complained about how slow it was saying that the processor isn't up to snuff. When I first fired it up and got to using it it was pretty slow. I uninstalled and deleted anything I didn't need and made sure I didn't have any unnecessary background programs or extensions running and it seems to do alright now. If you like to multitask this probably isn't for you, but if all you want is a small netbook to take anywhere to surf the net and not much else then it will probably work for you, but there are probably better options that are competitively priced. If you do get it, clean up the had drive by removing anything you know you don't need (tread lightly if you don't know what's important and whats garbage) and running as few programs as possibly at any time.

Buy Gateway LT Series LT4010U Intel Atom N2600 X2 1.6GHz 1GB 320GB 10.1" Win7 Starter (River Black) Now

This is excellent for the average user, although it can be a trifle slow running the stock operating system, which comes loaded to the hilt with all sorts. However, when you use the remove programs feature and whittle it down to just what you need, it becomes quite a bit faster. It's has a dual core Intel Atom processor and 1 gig of RAM and 320 gig drive. However, if you don't mind losing a bit of trivial functionality, you can do what I did, five minutes after buying it, and wipe the hard drive and put Linux on it (PinguyOS). Wow, real fast now and very stable. A much better computing experience and in doing this you get the full use of the 320 gig hard drive. This is because when you first get it about 13 gig of hard drive space is partitioned off for Gateway 'bloatware' storage which is then hidden. I thought this was a waste of space and made me feel like I didn't really own the computer. But now it's all mine, just the way I like it. Great little piece of kit. Recommended.

Read Best Reviews of Gateway LT Series LT4010U Intel Atom N2600 X2 1.6GHz 1GB 320GB 10.1" Win7 Starter (River Black) Here

I bought this PC about a month ago from Walmart Online at $178+Tax.

I was looking for a small PC and I bouthgt this unit because

1. Cheap

2. Small and Light (around 2.3lb)

3. Comes with a keyboard (not the best but much better than tablet on-screen keyboard)

4. Large HDD memory 320GB (when you compare this with tablet, this is huge !!)

5. Expandable (I will tell you more on this below)

Ok. Maybe someone say why do I compare this with tablet? This is not a tablet PC. True. But I was looking for a portable unit, I was considering both tablet and small PC. Tablet is great and popular today but many of them are actually heavy, or light but too small, no keyboard or comes with keyboard but adds more weight, or has everything but more expensive. From hardware configuration point of view, I liked the Microsoft Surface RT, but again it cost over $400. Plus many of these tablets come with memory size under 100GB. 4010u comes with 320GB!! and SD slot. You can spend little more $ to get a larger and more powerful low-end notebook, but I just like the smallness of this PC and 10.1 inch netbook was a perfect choice for me.

Gateway LT4010u comes with Win7 Starter. This is the light version of Win7 and it has all of the functions I need but Win7 Starter limits the RAM size recognition (It only recognize up to 2GB of RAM). So I did some search and found out that you can actually upgrade memory higher than 2GB and also that will improve the performance of this PC dramatically !! Here is how.

Step1: Upgrade OS from Win7 Start to Win7 32-bit or higher

Benefit -

I installed previously purchased Win7 Pro 32-bit to my 4010u. With this OS, I can make 4010u to recognize RAM size up to 2.99GB. I heard if you install 64-bit version, you can recognize higher memory size upto 4GB.

Challenge -

Since this PC does not come with a CD/DVD drive, I installed Win7 Pro from USB thumb drive. If you have a external CD/DVD drive, use it, but since I don't, I used my desktop PC and created an ISO file from CD, then installed from the USB thumb drive. There are many instructions available online so just google it.

Install Win7 Pro 32-bit Drivers -

After I installed Win7 Pro, I went the Gateway site, downloaded drivers and installed them. The link is here.

When I finished installing Win7 Pro, I found many drivers are missing and some functionality became unstable (e.g., touch pad). So you must install all drivers listed in this site to fix all of that. You don't need to install Gateway applications which you can find them on the same website but I only installed the WebCam app.

Step2: RAM upgrade from 1GB to 4GB

After Win7 Upgrade, I bought following memory from Amazon.

Crucial 4GB Single DDR3 1066 MT/s (PC3-8500) CL7 SODIMM 204-Pin Notebook Memory Module CT51264BC1067

I bought it at Amazon.com for around $26.

You can find the instruction of how to open 4010u and install RAM at following Youtube site. The netbook on this video is different from 4010u but it has a same exact design so you can apply same procedures to open 4010u and install RAM.

How-To: Gateway LT4004U Netbook RAM and Hard Drive Access

After this upgrade, you will feel this little netbook runs much much faster !!

Want Gateway LT Series LT4010U Intel Atom N2600 X2 1.6GHz 1GB 320GB 10.1" Win7 Starter (River Black) Discount?

Lots of good information in the other reviews but I can't stress enough the importance of upgrading the RAM to the 2GB size.

There is one memory slot in the unit unlike other PC's that actually have expansion slots so you MUST purchase the 2GB stick to fit into the one slot and not simply another 1GB stick.

There are updated videos on memory replacement in this model on YouTube... just search for "gateway netbook memory upgrade" and click on the video "How-To: Gateway LT4004U Netbook RAM and Hard Drive Access, Upgrade, Replace". Although it is for the LT4004U the units are identical when it comes to the upgrade. One hint, if you can avoid removing the keyboard's flat ribbon cable you should probably do it (you can get to the five screws if you are careful). It is a short cable and can be a pain to get back in the jack. If you do remove the cable, remember, when you re-install it, that you actually have to push it into the jack about 1/8th of an inch and don't simply lay it in the jack and snap the latch down or it will not work.

Once upgraded, the NetBook simply boots up without any fan-fare about more memory but you will notice a VAST improvement in performance.

Also, as of 3/15/2013, the Windows 7 starter that comes with the unit is about 50 Windows updates behind so get ready for a good sized update when you start using it. (went without a hitch by the way)

The good: Small and portable with good battery life. Super easy start-up/initial configuration, weight, screen brightness and keyboard key size as well as the low chassis temperature when running and software/hardware stability. Three USB jacks are adequate with two positioned close to each other for those double-USB cable accessories (external backup drives and DVD players (of course, the base unit has no DVD player/burner as per the specs. but you can find many on Amazon)

The bad: None really. You may want to head over to the "uninstall software" section of the Windows Control Panel to get rid of the extra (junk) software that many PC's come with that no one really wants.

This item is obviously NOT a powerhouse PC but it really does a respectable job. It is also for those who like the size of a tablet but HATE their limitations, this is perfect. For many people who like to get email and browse the web PLUS added storage via the hard drive and access to the vast number of software programs available to Windows based PC's this is an excellent and low cost buy.