Gateway NE72206u 17.3-Inch Deals

By James P. Tron - (CA)
This review is from: Gateway NE72206u 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silky Silver) (Personal Computers)
Been a Gateway user for years. Only PC/laptop I'll buy, even though Acer bought them out. Great power, memory, and storage for the money. Fast 2GHz quad core processore! Cannot downgrade to Window 7 from 8 since there are only a few available drivers. Installed third party user interface to make it look and act like Windows 7. Works great. My wife is happy with it, and, if she's happy, I'm happy.

 By Anthony Cross - (UK)
This review is from: Gateway NE72206u 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silky Silver) (Personal Computers)
I didn't have a huge budget for a new laptop, so this one was a great find. It's everything I needed for work and school, and still powerful enough for mobile gaming and high-def movies. Also, surprisingly light for a widescreen laptop.

By Daniel R. Renninger "Daniel" (West Mifflin, PA, USA)

This review is from: Gateway NE72206u 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silky Silver) (Personal Computers)
Someone told me that they purchased a 17 inch laptop for $300.00. I was very surprised that this was possible. So I looked for the least expensive one I could obtain and the Gateway NE72206U has the lowest price I could find. So I ordered one from Amazon since I had a good experience with a Gateway LT2815U netbook which has an unusually robust Intel Atom CPU. Out of the box it looks very nice. But after starting it the installed Norton Internet Security program took over and turned itself into something that behaved like a virus that would not let me do anything else. So I erased the hard drive to the maximum extent I could and installed a new copy of Windows 8 Pro I ordered from Microsoft in January 2013 (during their sale). That is why it would not connect to the internet. So I had to order a restoration disk from Gateway.com for $19.95 plus tax.

Evidently, it requires drivers that are not available from their web site to connect to the web. So I had I to install a Wireless-N USB adapter to connect to the internet. I managed to get it connect to the internet but only the internet browsers would work. So I went the to http://support.gateway.com/product site and downloaded eight drivers, four applications, one BIOS update, and a pdf copy of the Gateway N72206U User Manual which is not included with this computer. I installed the drivers one by one (some are multiplicates depending on who made the specific hardware component), the applications, and the BIOS update, and little by little it began to work as it should so that I could remove the Wireless-N USB adapter. So one definitely needs to be an IT professional to get the Gateway NE72206U to work as it should. I have installed Windows 8 on netbooks that were designed only for Windows 7 starter and they work much better with Windows 8 than they did with Windows 7 starter. That shows you that less costly netbooks are better designed than this Gateway NE72206U Notebook.

After using it a little more I have found that the keyboard is very erratic and the cursor tends to jump all over the page as you type which is typical of poorly designed computers. So you only can get what little you pay for here. Thus, the Gateway NE72206U is not a good value.