Gateway NE56R41u 15.6 Deals

By Bond, James Bond (Texas)
This review is from: Gateway NE56R41u 15.6" Intel B960 Pentium Processor 2.2GHz 4GB DDR3 SDRam 500GB Hard Drive Windows 8 (Black) (Personal Computers)
First of all, what happened to the cow boxes....?
This is my first gateway computer and a replacement for a Toshiba satellite that i purchased with no research whatsoever bedsides being inexpensive and having a number keypad.
First impressions- Not a bad computer at all! 3 USB slots and a HDMI so thats an upgrade for me. Windows 8 is kind of funky and I don't like it one bit but that has nothing to do with the computer itself. the screen is clear and large enough and the camera works good enough for video chat

bad stuff- speakers suck,
great buy for the price!
edit*** a few weeks later
speakers are stil low quality but you get used to it. I wish there was a caps lock and number lock indicator light but I guess I can use my eyes as i type.
I am happy with the battery life and I think this computer s a keeper.
No as far as Microsoft goes..........grrrrrr making Office super expensive and a horrible interface.
But the computer is good once chrome takes over :)

 By Matt (Missouri) -(CA)

This review is from: Gateway NE56R41u 15.6" Intel B960 Pentium Processor 2.2GHz 4GB DDR3 SDRam 500GB Hard Drive Windows 8 (Black) (Personal Computers)
I know this is a cheap laptop, but it would have been nice to use it for more than three months (light business and very little web use) before it crapped out. Just a few weeks after I bought it, I had to restore it. Then it worked decent for a month or so before I started getting hard drive failure warnings, and now it's kaput. Luckily, they're replacing the hard drive and all I have to pay is shipping, but I shouldn't be sending off this item so soon.

I don't recommend buying this.

UPDATE: I spent twenty-five bucks for shipping with insurance to have the hard drive replaced. The laptop arrived in the mail today, and after spending hours moving my files back to the laptop & reinstalling programs, I'm getting a blue screen telling me the PC ran into a problem and has to restart. I've contacted Gateway support and requested a refund.

UPDATE #2: Acer (apparently when I bought a Gateway, I was actually buying a disguised Acer) support tried multiple times unsuccessfully to fix my many problems with this computer, then asked me to send it in for repairs again. I refused, as I am not investing another dime in this piece of junk. They refused to give me a refund, so I asked for a new unit to replace this one, as it is completely useless. They refused to do that as well. "We do not offer refunds or replacements," they said. I will never buy anything Gateway/Acer again, and I strongly discourage anyone else from doing so.

By GMX -(CA)
This review is from: Gateway NE56R41u 15.6" Intel B960 Pentium Processor 2.2GHz 4GB DDR3 SDRam 500GB Hard Drive Windows 8 (Black) (Personal Computers)
I purchased this laptop from Wal-Mart -- but had exactly the same issues as rjhouse describes in his review. After a half hour or so of useless troubleshooting with Gateway support, I resolved to return it to the store and get a roughly-equivalent laptop from HP for $20 more.

But before doing so, I used Device Manager to "Update Driver" on the "Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter." which swapped out the Broadcom driver for one supplied by Microsoft. I have not had a problem since -- it has been working 100% great, not a single drop, and network performance has been fine.

I kept the laptop and haven't looked back. This laptop is pretty decent for the money. Performs well, good amount of storage, reasonably low price. Knowing what I know now about how to get the networking to work properly, I'd buy one again if I were in the market again.

I won't give it 5 stars though -- it's not all roses -- there are a few things I find annoying or unsatisfactory:
- Audio isn't loud enough
- The touchpad button is one long bar that acts as 2 buttons, depending on which end of it you press -- but this renders the center of the button unusable and the button is progressively harder to press the closer to the center you get. So you pretty much have to press the very ends of the bar.
- The touchpad is offset to the left. I guess this makes sense as it's more like a full-size keyboard since they fit a full numeric pad onto this one -- but since it isn't centered with the screen, it takes some getting used to.
- No caps-lock/numlock/scroll-lock lights (somewhat resolved using keyboard-leds.com app). But I think many laptops are like this nowadays.