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Gateway NV5213u 15.6-Inch Laptop Review from Eric Johnson. Great laptop, but be aware: Customer Service is Clueless, Excellent laptop, very feature packed for a good price. Stripped Vista off and installed Windows 7 RC and it’s working great. Mine didn’t come with a slip in the box for the free Windows 7 upgrade, but you can find their official order page at [...] I put in my S/N and it was confirmed as a valid unit and purchase.

The keyboard takes a little getting used to with it’s flat profile keys and the loooong one-peice click bar for the touch pad. After using it for a week it feels fine now, but I can see how that setup might be annoying for some people. Try one out at a local store like Best Buy and see what you think.

Screen is gorgeous and eye-popping, though you still have to deal with the nice glare that all of those glossy screens get. DVD burner works great, though it can get a little noisy at high-speeds. Can’t comment on any of the preinstalled apps, since I quickly reformatted and installed W7 RC, but it looked like it had the usual OEM bloatware on it.

My only complaint seems to be the same as everyone else, the support for this series of laptop (NV series) is horrendous. The website has no documentation, drivers, or support for the series what-so-ever, and CS can’t give me any estimate as to when they’ll be available. I tried entering my S/N into the My Support section of their website, and it comes back as unrecognized, meaning they don’t have any support setup for these laptops yet.

And honestly, customer support in general is a joke. Don’t bother with the email and chat support, if you need to contact them, just call. I’ve gone through Chat, Email, and Phone, and in all three cases, the reps were completely clueless, in most cases had no idea what I was even asking for, and simply used pre-written responses. The worst was the email, where I asked them if they had an estimated date when drivers and support docs would be available for the NV series on their website, and I received a response telling me to burn a recovery CD.

Prior to wiping the preinstalled Vista, I couldn’t get the recovery discs to burn either, so I’m just going to wait for them to come available through the Purchase Program Website (don’t worry, it’s free if the unit is still under warranty): [...] Just keep checking back till they are avaiable. In the meantime, if you do need to roll back to the default installation, the image is stored on a hidden partition that you can Restore from at any time by booting into a recovery console during POST. Just make sure you remember that partition is there if you ever reformat your drive or install another OS and leave it be.

I would have given the laptop a 3-Star score, but with the hidden partition still intact for a full system restore if I need it, the only thing I’m really missing is the pre-installed drivers and apps. Fortunately, they are not much of a concern for me since it’s been running great with the drivers provided by W7 RC and a couple others I downloaded for the videocard and such, and I really don’t care for all of the pre-installed gateway bloatware anyway. So I gave it a 4-Star score because at its price point it is a pretty sweet peice of hardware, even if Gateway Support isn’t aware that it’s out on the market yet

To check price or purchase Gateway NV5213u 15.6-Inch Laptop.

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