Gateway LT2113u 10.1-Inch Red Netbook - Over 10 Hours of Battery Life

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This is a review of Gateway LT2114u with Windows XP.
At home I have two desktops, one laptop and a FreeNAS server I built out of an old Pavilion HP. I'm not that crazy computer geek who buys "cool" stuff just for the sake of it. However, I've been working in the computer industry for 18 years, and I know my way around computers. It happens I write a lot and I need a machine which I can access anytime without bothering with cables or AC adapters or short-life batteries. This netbook seems to fit exactly those needs.
I needed a nice looking machine running XP, build by a reputable company, with a 6-cell battery, under 0.
Why XP? I can go on and on, but to make it short: Windows 7, IMO, is just an improved version of Vista. If you want to do yourself harm, then go ahead and buy Win7, then pay for upgrading it to the Home Premium, then pay for another 1GB of RAM. With XP you get everything that Win7 has plus much better battery life, faster processing power and a lot of applications.
Anyway, I went to a B&M store and looked at several netbooks. There aren't that many that runs XP: Toshiba Mini NB305-310, Acer AO532h-2382 and Gateway LT2114u were among the ones I like. Asus's sea-shell form was kind of awkward: too `bulgie" at the back. Mini NB305-310 has very tiny speakers and a lot of owners complained about them. The price was also a factor. Acer looks nice, but I can't (alas!) stand a huge "Acer" logo displayed on the lid of the display. I don't want to be a walking advertisement for any corporation. Gateway LT2114u was perfect: all black, very nice keyboard with flat keys, Bluetooth and a very tiny silver logo on the side of the lid. I got it from Amazon for 0 a month ago.

MEMORY
First of all, the way I use the netbook, I don't need 2GB of RAM. I don't fall for the strange ideas of watching HD movies or playing 3D games on 10 inch screen. Let me assure you that this netbook runs excellent without adding a second GB of RAM. I was able to have several Google Chrome tabs opened - no problem, watching videos on youtube using wireless (G mode) - no problem.

STORAGE
160 GB is everything I need and more. First I removed trial version of Office, and MS Works. Works has a task panel on the right that covers one-fourth of the screen with obnoxious advertisements. Clicking on "use without ads" takes you to the M$ site where you can upgrade your version of Works. Nope, not for me. I also removed Norton and a couple of other little things. Not that much of bloatware.

INSTALL
Next I installed:
1. OpenOffice (spreadsheet and word processor)
2. Avira Antivirus Personal (see av-comparatives dot org for reviews)
3. Google Chrome (for me, it was the fastest browser). Use F11 for a full display.
4. Desktop v1.02 from sysinternals. This little program (60KB) will let you have 4(!) different desktops at the same time (just like in Linux). So if you have a spreadsheet open and then want to switch to your word processor, you don't have to close the former to open the latter: just press Alt+1 (or 2,3.4 for other desktops).

RECOVERY DISKS
I didn't want to buy an external DVD drive just to be able to make Recovery Disks. There are several ways to do this or you can buy ones from Gateway for . I bought a USB-to-IDE adapter similar to the one sold by Amazon and used a DVD drive from my old desktop with Gateway Recovery Management program to burn DVDs. It took 15 min to write per disk and 1:20 to verify. Total was 3 DVDs.

RESTORING
I successfully tested Hard Disk recovery (D2D) to reinstall OS from the hidden partition.

BATTERY
Amazing! The very first thing I did was to fully charge the battery. I've been using it for about a month. The battery runs on average 13 hours. One more very important thing: the 6-cell battery is hardly sticking out at the bottom: no bulge, no extra 1.5 inch of size as in some other brands.

Overall, I am very pleased with the netbook. I don't have anything negative to say about it, probably because I knew what to expect from a netbook. It happened to be the exactly size/color/specs I needed. Hope you like it too.

Gateway LT2113u 10.1-Inch Red Netbook - Over 10 Hours of Battery Life Features

• 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 Processor
• 1024MB DDR2 667MHz Memory
• 160GB SATA Hard Drive; 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi Certified
• 10.1" WSVGA High Brightness LED-backlit Display; Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
• Windows XP Home; Over 10 Hours of Battery Life