Gateway LT2802u Netbook Review

Recently I was in the market for small, portable laptop. My current laptop is a beast, and I'm terrified of traveling with it and it ending up broken. I wanted something that had solid battery life, could do most of what I could do with my normal laptop, and it needed to be inexpensive.

After a bit of searching I found the Gateway LT2802u. It met my price requirements (it usually sells for around $225 to $295 new) and it is small enough to fit into my tote bag sized purse. The netbook is extremely light; it weighs less than 3 pounds and the screen size is 10.1". Even though it is small, I still feel like I have enough room to type without feeling squished. Additionally, while I bought a small laptop mouse to go with the netbook because I usually hate touchpad mice, the touchpad is actually pretty easy to use. The touchpad mouse also uses multi-gesture technology, which allows you to zoom in and out, and tab through pages with the movements of your fingers.

One of the best things about the LT2802u is the battery life; I can get anywhere from 4 to 6 hours of use. I do have to put the screen on its dimmest setting though, but it's worth the trade off. The laptop itself is rather quick, I can be running several browsing windows and a word processor software at the same time with no lag. The processor is a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 and the computer comes with 1 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, which can be upgraded to 2 GB of RAM. This is solid amount of power for such an inexpensive machine. I also saved some money by finding notebook deals online, so be sure to check those out.

The Gateway LT2802u is basically perfect for most on the go computing. It includes 3 USB 2.0 slots, a VGA video out port, an RJ45 port, and a fairly diverse memory card reader. While it's too small to have many more slots than what is on the netbook, with the USB slots and card reader there's little you can't accomplish in a pinch with this laptop.

Overall, this laptop is inexpensive, well designed, and great for doing things on the move.