Gateway uc7811

Quick specs-
Core2 Duo T6400 2GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470
13.3 inch
usual goodies – cam, wifi (draft N), vga port etc
not so usual goodies – bluetooth, HDMI
Vista Home Premium
320gb Harddrive, 2gb ram

It packs a lot of power with its (64 bit compatible) processor. But when buying a laptop, one should not only look at the processor, more importantly, one should consider a decent graphics card (especially if one play games occasionally). And with the ATI 3470, the uc7811i surely have a top of the line video card in at least a couple of years to come.

Most laptops do not have bluetooth built in- a bluetooth module is actually quite cheap- the reason laptop manufacturers do not include it may be hard think about. HDMI is the multimedia port of the future. If you are thinking blu-ray entertainment, HDMI is a must then. One can live without bluetooth or HDMI features but it is always good to have and maybe tomorrow you will have a use for it

The Gateway uc7811i is my current performance per price champion for laptops (the Nokia 5800 being my champion for cellphones but that is another topic). A laptop like this should be in the 50k pesos price tag at the least. You can go look for laptops in the mall at that price range and seldom would you find one as feature packed as the uc7811i. Suprisingly, its price is just a few thousand pesos higher than a netbook at (30k to 35k). Afterall, Gateway was known for budget laptops even before it was acquired by giant Acer.

Its screen size of 13.3 fits between a regular notebook (14.1) and a netbook. Its not as slim as the Neo Edge or the current Acer Timelines but it is not heavy either. It has a slot loading optical disk much like the Macbooks.

Its overall style is desirable. Its top cover is brown, glossy, shiny, elegant and attractive though something you would consider a finger print magnet much like the Acer Aspire One. It is easy to clean though. The frame containing the LCD is black, shiny and plastic. Still like what the AAO have, is very scratch prone. Not a big deal either. The wrist pad rest area around the circular touch pad is black and has a sort of vinyl / metallic finish that would never fade. Together with the excellent keyboard, and the plain touchpad (that is lacking any scroll feature which would have been a bonus) is quite all black and feels good to the touch. Very good design taste Gateway!

There is a multimedia touch sensitive LED at the top of the keyboard wherein you can adjust the volume or play, pause, skip or repeat a music or video clip. Those red colors on top of shiny black looks cool as well. But that LED panel is something Gateway can do away with. I do not think I would be able to use it much if at all. But it looks highly sophisticated.

Kubuntu

Excited, I downloaded through torrent a 64 bit version of Kubuntu to test out this lean machine.

For a side story, I started out my Linux journey way back in college around 2002. KDE was clearly superior to GNOME back then because they have a development headstart of at least a year. So KDE was my preferred desktop until around three years ago when Ubuntu became really popular. Add the fact that the 4.0 branch of KDE was buggy when it was released (early 2008?), so I finally decided to make the switch. But now I am itching to try out KDE again with most bugs from the early 4.0 fixed and the whole interface is now a lot more slicker and better.

I was surprised that everything works out of the box when I installed Kubuntu in my uc7811i. I really cannot believe that Linux can be this easy now thanks to the Ubuntu community and both the GNOME and KDE groups (and also to Linus Torvalds, GNU and the other big distros Redhat / Fedora, Suse / Novell, Mandriva formerly Mandrake my first distro, Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, Knoppix et al). My apologies to those I unknowingly left out.

Cam works out of the box and can be used in Skype. Wifi too. The video is flawless though I am not sure if there is anything else that I need to install for my ATI card. Sound works though you have to adjust alsamixer first. The external mic works well. Unfortunately, the internal mic that is connected to the headset seems to have low volume with Skype (same in Vista when I tried it before) I may have to let Acer Repair look into it. I am sure it will be fixed and not a major annoyance. (Update: mic seems fine.)

I used the 64bit installer of Kubuntu but my kernel does not reveal a 64 bit- that too I have to read about but is my fault. (Update I am expecting an x86_64 kernel but most apps are 64 bit so this seems ok even though I get a generic kernel).

Through apt-get, I have installed Skype (instructions here), flash (here), pidgin, xchat, brasero, vlc, tomboy, transmission, tsclient, xtightvncviewer, firefox, gimp, kwrite, subversion – mostly GNOME apps that I am very used to.

Now my system is something I can use for play as well as work. Perfect!

Overall, I really really like this machine. Its power and fashion is top notch and rivals any other laptop twice its amount. Truly value for my hard earned money.

Now, is there anything not to love with the Gateway uc7811i? (Oh! I am paying for an operating system that I will not be using!)

My Kubuntu desktop