In the search for affordable 11.6-inch netbooks, you have a couple of enticing choices in the Acer Aspire One 751h (see review here) and the Gateway LT3103. Both pretty much come from the same company, as Acer owns Gateway, and while the outward look and feel of each system is pretty similar, there are some notable internal differences.
Scott Wasson over at the Tech Report did an excellent job comparing the two systems, so make sure to hit up his 10-page opus for the full details. Here are some of the highlights:
- The Acer 751h is whisper quiet, while the LT3103’s fan is constantly running
- The Gateway LT3103 has better trackpad
- The Gateway LT3103 has better web browsing performance
- The Gateway’s screen is a little better with color reproduction
- Both keyboards are pretty much exactly the same
- Neither system does well with video past 480p QuickTime, SD DivX, and low-res Hulu in a window
- Wasson removed McAfee from the Acer, and Norton from Gateway and replaced Vista on both machines with Windows 7 RC1. The Acer had more bloatware out of the box.
- Battery life with a six-cell battery: Gateway got 3 hours while watching movies, 4 hours when web surfing; Acer got 5 hours while watching movies, 6.5 hours when web surfing
Overall, Wasson finds the LT3103 to offer the fewest compromises — the main one being battery life, but that’s about it. Without having tried the LT1303 myself personally, I can still see his point. The two systems are very similar as far as price and build are concerned — the Acer offers marathon battery life but not much power, while the Gateway offers much more power at the expense of battery life and noise:
“The Gateway LT3103 is the most successfully executed of the two systems, because its Athlon 64 processor and Radeon graphics give it the performance to match its larger screen and keyboard. The grown-up looks and finish of the Gateway set it apart from the Aspire One 751, as well. If you like to fret over the semantics of ‘netbook’ versus ‘notebook,’ the LT3103 will positively put you into a tizzy of hair splitting and confusion—endless hours of fun. I could see this system replacing a full-sized laptop for an awful lot of users. It’s a heck of a bargain, too, compared to the Aspire One 751, since it comes with a larger battery at the same price.
The only real compromise the LT3103 requires, other than the lamentable lack of Bluetooth and 802.11n support, is its run time of roughly four hours…
…Although I don’t like the performance compromises required by the Aspire One 751, there’s no denying that it has a place in the market for folks who value sleek, quiet systems with high-res displays and long battery life—so long as you’re talking about a version with the six-cell battery. This is perhaps more of a color Kindle-killer for the web—a mobile device, if you will—than a full-fledged computer. You’ll just want to have your eyes wide open going into the purchase and be prepared to have your patience tested from time to time.”
Just as an aside: I tried out Windows 7 RC1 on the test Aspire One 751h that I have here and found it to be a bit too sluggish for everyday use. Once I reverted back to XP, everything was noticeably snappier. If you’re considering the 751h, I might suggest you look into one of the XP systems. Windows 7 ran okay once I ratcheted everything down as far as the display and graphical effects are concerned but XP ran pretty smoothly straight away once I’d removed McAfee and added an extra gigabyte of RAM.
Aspire One 751 vs. Gateway LT3103 [The Tech Report]
why are they fighting against each other? doesnt acer on gateway..
I have the acer 751h running windows 7 RC1, aero enabled -but no transparency and some other features such as minimize-maximize effects disabled. It runs just as snappy as windows XP did. I’m able to watch 720p .avi files via VLC.
I do recommend downloading the latest drivers for the gma 500 (there’s a link on wikipedia, also for windows XP), instead of the ones windows 7 downloads; they really help a LOT.
Good comparision between Gateway LT3103 and Acer Aspire
Gateway Lt3103 US (GPU X1270) seems to be a decent machine with between 3-4 hours of battt life on a 6 cell. Sound quality is also fair. However the graphic card is a bit sluggish on HD on Hulu, but it may need to be tweaked. Overall the display size and quality is superb. HDTV works fine on it with an external Tuner on Win 7RC. Vista is useless and that the system could be marketed with XP with recovery disks.
The cheaper Canadain version of Lt 3103 u has a substandard GPU X1200 and not advisable for purchase
I also recently purchased the Gateway LT3103 and installed Win 7RC but can’t find drivers for the Radeon x1270 to save my life. If you don’t mind, where did you locate them from?
Try here:
http://www.radarsync.com/drivers/d272896-ati_radeon_x1270
No fight here, I got one of each! The “cute” 751h for the wife and the more manly looking black LT3103 for me. With some tweaks to vistas services.msc and getting rid of bloatware and using avast for antivirus, they are both fine machines. I also like how the batteries and power supplies are interchangeable between the two.
I had a perfect install of Windows 7 on the Gateway LT3103 and it was running perfectly. Downloaded all the drivers from the Gateway site that, which are actually designed for Vista.
The problem that arose a few days after install the Gateway LT3103 trackpad stopped working under Windows 7. I tried to reinstall the drivers, and even did a system restore (that actually worked for one reboot). Nothing worked. I thought maybe the trackpad is broken, but when I boot from usb to my Windows 7 installer the trackpad works fine again. So I wiped did a clean install, and re-installed the drivers for the track pad. Nothing. I am trying to install a Hackintosh on it today to see if that works, and then I will try XP.