Gateway P-7811FX Laptop

You would have to spend $2000 or more to find a notebook comparable to this outstanding Gateway P-7811FX. This is a great desktop replacement ! Good video card , plenty of ram, beautiful 17" hi-res display, very nice keyboard and an unbelievable price !
We got this to replace a year old Dell Inspiron 1720 that had become a nightmare. This is twice the PC for $350 less. Also it doesn't get too hot. This is our 5th notebook [2 Dell 2 HP] and by far the most enjoyable to use.

avoid the video card problem is a deal killer your games locking up every 10-15 min is a real problem. It works great for everything else but its over kill if you are not going to game with it

I love this laptop.
It's pretty much good for anything.
I'm not a huge gamer, but it is always nice to know that I can play any game I want.
This laptop matches all of the system requirements for any game out there.
The screen is big and had a very clean look to it.
The resolution is amazing.
I highly recommend buying this laptop.
You won't be sorry.

I am thoroughly impressed with this machine. Granted, it's been a few years since I put my desktop machines together but I was NOT expecting the kind of performace revelation that I got from this laptop once I got it home. The picture and graphics smoothness are absolutely amazing. It easily out performs my desktop. For you World of Warcraft fans: How about 1900x1440, with ALL video options maxed and still getting 60 frames/sec during a 25 man raid?!? Sure WoW is not as graphics intensive as some of the newer games out there but I'll tell ya... it's like playing a new game with how awesome everything looks! Load times are about 1/4 to 1/5 of what they are on my desktop (desktop is IDE Raid 0 with 2 7200 rpm drives). I had no idea that games should run this way.

The down side: It's already been mentioned... it does make some heat when gaming. I knew this going in and purchased a cooling pad along with the machine. So far this has been a "feature". I set my coffee cup next to the outflow port and it stays hot for hours! :D Other cons include the Nobodywantsme-ware included and pre-installed. This is where home schooled mouse button pushers should stay away. A complete dump and reinstall of operating system is drivers is a great recommendation but I did not find it necessary in my case. I had Best Buy fire the thing up and update all the drivers. Once I got it home, I updated the ones they missed then uninstalled all of the Crapware except for Norton 360 (which I find very useful). I think that so long as you preform this action prior to installing ANYTHING else, you won't have to do a complete reformat (at least, I didn't).

Other subtle annoyances are a lack of cabling. It's hard to gripe about this considering the cost of this laptop. I mean... for less than $1500 and considering what you already get... what does one expect? I find myself purchasing both and external SATA (for my backup drive) and Firewire cable equipped with the tiny connector on the computer end. I've also purchased a Bluetooth dongle that fits inside of one of the USB port (I love this thing by the way. Very handy to have).

About the only other thing on my current wish list is a backpack to house this monster for transport and possibly a USB hub that affixes itself to the laptop. Curretnly, I have my trackball hookes to the port on the right, the Bluetooth dongle and cooling pad plugged into the left (my kingdom for a Bluetooth version of my Trackball). I can't think of a thing at the monent though, of what else I might need to plug into a USB port. The cam is built in (and does a fantastic job btw), and the internal microphone does well for most things (my Bluetooth device does the rest).

My bottom line: I've built a boat load of machines and purchased a number of laptops over the years. With every build and every purchase there's always some aspect of the final product that elaves you thinking, "Hmmm... I thought that would be better" --or-- "I expected this to be faster" --or-- "The display isn't as sweet as I'd expected" or whatever... This is the first time that I've just been hands down impressed. It may not outperform all the computers that your buddy says he has but I'd bet a dollar it will outperform the one he REALLY has. In other words: Sure, there are some bleeding edge builds out there that are stacked but to get this kind of performace from a a self-build... I guarantee that you'll be spending considerably more.

Updated on Oct 6, 2008

Pardon my typos, A larger editing screen would be a nice addition.

Best Buy's price is 1449.99 no the 1249.99 listed here.

Best gaming notebook for the price. I was on a tight budget and this is what I got. I paid full price for it and the next week, Best Buy had put it back on sale for $200 less. I got a refund of $200 back. Now that is customer service.

With a powerful processor, 4 GB of ram, fast 200 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive, and 9800m GTS video card, it's hard to understand how Gateway makes any money off of these notebooks. Simply put, this was made for mobile gaming on a budget...and it's powerful gaming at that. The 9800m GTS easily handles everything thrown at it, including Call of Duty 4 (1920x1200, 4xAA, Highest Details - 50+ FPS), Crysis Warhead (1280x800, no AA, Enthusiast - 40 FPS), and Mass Effect (1440x900, 2xAA, Highest Details - 56 FPS). It easily matched the performance of my Desktop 9600 GT.

The processor is no slouch, either. At only 2.26ghz, it might seem like a step down from Intel's T-series, but it performs much much faster, even on Vista 64-Bit. To add to that, thanks to Centrino 2's power optimization, the P-7811FX boasts a vastly superior battery life compared to other 17" notebooks. With brightness at 65%, that battery can support up to 3 hours of wireless web-browsing, or 2.5 hrs of DVD playback.

It comes with Vista 64-Bit installed--which I preferred to take full advantage of the 4 GB of DDR3 RAM @ a blistering 1066mhz--but the disc also includes the 32-Bit version. The amount of Gateway "bloatware" was average, but not bothersome.

The design is hit or miss, as some might be turned off by the orange rust accents. The keyboard is responsive and crisp, although no touch-key media bar hampers the style. Only 3 high-speed USB ports on board, but the inclusion of an HDMI output as well as an eSATA cable make up for it. Simple Wi-Fi switch on the front makes for convenience, however one oddity is the lack of a Touch Pad on/off function key. High Definition audio os sufficient, however the built-in speakers don't impress as there are no subwoofers. Thankfully, most of the useful ports are on the sides, which is a convenient touch, and the built-in memory card reader is faster thand the average bunch. Some may balk at the battery, which pertrudes out the back by 1" (I sure did), but it doesn't get in the way of much, but be cautious when purchasing a 17" bag or case.

This notebook, although doesn't meet all of the media requirements I'd like, is a definate must-buy for any mobile gamer who doesn't have the means to shell out an arm, leg, and first-born for performance. I would've like some purhase options to add in a Blu-Ray drive & a 2nd HDD, but can't expect much as this is sold exclusively at Best Buy retail outlets (but I bought a compatible Blu-Ray drive on NewEgg for $260). In the end, for $1,250, this thing is the ultimate steal, as it easily out-performs Sager, ASUS, HP, and Alienware notebooks that start at $400 more, and can easily run up to twice the price in order to match the performance of the P-7811FX. Simply put, you cannot find better performance at this price.

I bought this laptop 1 month back... especially for editing videos and animation stuff as i am visual effects student.... surprisingly all the applications were running really great... And games were also running great... i finished 'Crysis WARHEAD', 'Assassins Creed'... They really great....

A really stunning, high performing laptop of an amazing spec. Considering the price this thing rivals Alienware hardware at a fraction of the price. It may weigh nearly 10 lbs but that's a small price to pay for having your own super hadron collider in your bag. It's a powerful beast make no mistake. If you want what amounts to high-end desktop perforamnce on the move then the P-7811FX delivers this. Scores 5.2 on Vista's performance measurements. Hard drive might not be huge @ 200GB but out performs my desktop's SATA2 7200rpm for speed. I have done a lot of research lately into laptops and none of the competition outperforms this machine at anywhere near the same price. Don't be duped by 500GB HDs. You can easily fit one to this Gateway. Rival notebooks like HPs Pavillion may offer a bigger drive but they fail miserable on 3D performance with inferior GFX at chuggy framerates compared to the silky smooth rates you get on the P-7811FX. No, you won't find a better laptop for the price. Don't be deterred by the occassional person who struggled with drivers. You'll always get some guy who doesn't know whether to click with the left or right mouse button. For everyone else that can follow simple instructions this notebook is a hot proposition and will give you exceptional value for your money.

its tricky, first of all, you have to "reinstall" everything(vista 64bit OS, lots of drivers, should comes with a CD for vista OS 32 and 64, most update driver can be found on gateway website)

if you don't, good luck on playing games and happily there after, since laptop itself comes with BUNCH of trash software, which gets really messy and slow down the laptop.

second, if you are using it for gaming, you might want to get a cooling pad(or cooler pad), not only helps prevent laptop from overheating, also saves your furniture from heat.

third, run into a little compatibility problem(vista OS 64), you can choose to install the 32 one with the CD that comes with it

forth, as a desktop replacement laptop, its heavy, around 9.2lbs, if you move around a lot, or always traveling, the entire package might weight over 12lbs(laptop, cooler pad, ac adapter, extra hard drive, accessories)

as explain above, I am still happy this laptop, excellent graphic and performance all that good stuff for $1,300

This is a great looking laptopp, very attractive features with touch controls above the keyboard for your multimedia apps. Although it lacks some of the basic features, it still has plenty to offer. The system came with minimal excess software that we all dread removing and took very little time to update and tweak for better gaming performance and. I loaded a few games and turned the graphics setting ALL THE WAY UP and this laptop did not choke or even hesitate during gameplay. They do mention that the HDD is only 200GB but they fail to mention its a 7200RPM drive. I looked at several other gaming systems and they all had 5400RPM drives and DDR2 RAM and were $500-$1000 more one average. I truly feel that the increased drive read write performance more than compenstaes for the smaller size. If I really was looking for mass storage, I'd buy an external 1TB drive.

Great laptop Gateway, I'll be buying another for my son in a few months!

I have had this laptop for a couple of weeks now. I compared a lot of different laptops before I bought one. I don't particularly like pre-configured computers or straight box sales. However, configuring my own system, I could not even come close to the price point. For my money this is the best. I went to an wholesale ASUS dealer and they quoted me $400 more dollars for a slower system. If you want one get it soon. My local stores sold out when it went on sale.

I got this laptop for my son and I to play games on, and the wife to surf the web on. First off it comes with a bunch of annoying software Norton 360, BigFix, Google Toolbars etc that the user will have to disable. I sort of expected some of this, but it did get annoying.
I installed my son's games and they ran fine for me in my short tests, but when my son ran them for more than 15 minutes they caused hardlocks. I suspect it is the GPU but could never determine if it was overheating, or if it was the extremely bad beta drivers that Gateway was pushing with this computer. I did try a couple of other beta drivers they didn't push and they didn't solve the problem either.
Speaking of Gateway support when I tried to get some help from them they claimed ?since they didn?t know how my computer was configured they could only point me to? a link explaining how to diagnose lock issues and how to shutoff services, and programs that get loaded at startup. None of which was any help. On top of this the gateway drivers and support page seemed to only work half of the time and didn?t even allow you to pick the correct OS for this computer until sometime in the second week of September about 8-10 days after I had purchased this computer.
On top of those issues I ran into Vista 64 software compatibility issues with a few of the older games the grandparents got for my son. QuickTime really never worked right (couldn't see the menu bar when it was embedded in web pages). It also seemed like Internet explorer was fighting me at every turn. IE 64 bit seems like it has a lot of compatibility issue and I gave up on it after a couple of minutes.
So after fighting the first computer for about 11 days I took it back and exchanged it for another thinking the first must have been a lemon. THE SECOND ONE HAD ALL THE SAME PROBLEMS. So I returned that on and got my money back.
Contrary to how all of this sounds I am really sorry to have had to return this computer because had the potential to be awesome, and I really did want it to be. I just am not willing to bet $1300 that the issues I was experiencing were something Gateway could fix with driver/bios updates.

This laptop is frankly amazing. It has the best video card, and it is so cheap. Most laptop of its class would sale for $2000+. Its keyboard is very comfortable to type on, and gives you a very sturdy feel, feels like a luxury for sure. Also, the keyboard has a full number key pad, which is also extremely nice if you need to enter numbers. This is definitely a desktop replacement, it does everything a desktop would do, and it is only 9 pounds.

Noise is somewhat noticeable, there are two fans in this laptop. One on the left side for GPU and one on the back for CPU. The left side fan does bother me a little bit, because it turns itself on and off regularly and sometimes surprises me a little.

The laptop comes with Vista 64 bits installed, though I need to run a software in 32bits, so I formatted the hard drive and installed vista 32bits. Though, to my surprise there is little or no online support for drivers download on the gateway website. Eventually, I got all the drivers needed in notebookreview.com discussion. All my 4Gb DDR3 Ram was recognized in 32bits after the vista service pack 1 was installed.

Another noticeable problem is the heating of the hard drive, which is right under my right wrist. I had the same problem with the Sager NP8660, but the p-7811fx generate less heat and is more tolerable. It seems like many of the new laptops are having hard drive heating problems, I am not sure why.

Overall, this laptop is very gorgeous and does everything exceedingly well and the battery life is good. I would recommend this laptop to anyone want a cheap high end laptop that will last many years.

A great laptop at a great price that, IMHO, is only beated by the HP Pavilion dv7-1055ea.

1. appearance looks outdated but acceptable, latch, big wireless button, battery stick out 1 inch at the back, poor color choice black & orange, louest clicking sound ever from that touchpad buttons, and with indicator lights behind tp buttons, i constantly mispressed on that red light instead left button. good thing is cover and palmrest pretty shiny.

2. build is sturdy, 8.8p on the system, with adaptor about 10p, carryable. rit palmrest gets warm with hard drive underneath it. smart creative hard drive compartment design, no screws needed( has springs). 2nd hd has tray and conector handy. cpu is located at the bottom, easy to upgrade.

3. performance, montevian 2.26 scored 34.1s on wprime, pretty good. ofc u can swap the cpu for a faster one like 2.53(30.6s on wprime) or 2.8. not sure about extreme processors since p7811 comes with only 120w adaptor vs dell xps 1730 230w.
ddr3 1066mhz memory scores 5.9 on wei, interesting. hard drive is 7200rpm with 16mb cache, the fastest on the market. 9800mgts
is super, great fps and video quality, scored 8731 on 3d mark06, my old dell xps ( 256mb 8700m gt) 3d06 score is 4400. ya, do the math.
lcd screen is good, no light leakage, color is a bit to dark though, even changed brightness & gamma setting , colors still very dark.
lcd screen is not good enough to
go with 9800m gts. speaker is the best i ever heard from a notebook with audio 2.0, ZERO DISTORTION. however volume is low and sound effects is way behind dell xps 1730 with 5.0+subwoofer.
lets put it this way, p7811 is like that cleveland basketball team, with one superstar James--gpu 9800m gts tries to carry mediocre components , yet always falls short.
gateway p7811 is more of an all around desktop
replacement than a gaming specialist like dell xps 1730.

the unit i bought from queens center bestbuy
had bsod-blue screen of death, restarts every 15-30 mins. ran prime95 on it, all passed.
didnt ship with correct drivers or applications.

so i installed vista x64 on my own hd, and installed intel wifi & nvidia graphics driver only,
and now its problem free.

this gateway p7811 gives me a feeling of "dell"
with their design. also, no way any pc maker can make money sell this at $1249.
either gateway do it for brand awareness or
just wasting their parent company acer's money.

from a consumer's standpoint, this could be the bargian of decade.

Updated on Sep 9, 2008

ok, the faulty driver is intel chipset driver that caued p7811 to restart every 30 mins. any question u can go to notebookreview.com forum,
about drivers and vista x32 support, u can find drivers on laptopvideo2go.com. actaully vista x32 runs faster than x64 on p7811.

hit yes on "was this review helpful" and bump my post up, thx!

Overall, one of the best laptops out there. I actually have been using more than my desktop PC for game, and my desktop is a high end system also. Looks overall are ok, for being a gamer system. Overall, a good purchase for the serrious gamer...

Add up all the features and you have a laptop that should cost almost twice as much. This laptop boots in 60 seconds to a usable state even with Norton 360. Very fast! I was initially concerned about HDMI 1.2 vs. 1.3a but after a bit of research this appears to be less of an issue. No built-in Bluetooth was fixed with a $30 Kensington Bluetooth USB Micro Adapter. No Blu-Ray factory option altough one is available in the Japanese version of the laptop or via the eSATA port.

In summary, a definite buy.

This is the greatest computer I've ever owned! It tears through every game that I've thrown at it at maximum settings and resolution. Great for school work and other uses. Great for traveling. I had planned on getting the Alienware m15x but when I saw this beauty at half the price and nearly as powerful I had made up my mind. I strongly recommend this notebook you won't regret it!

I´m planning on buying this laptop, BUT, I NEED to use Windows XP, has anyone tried to downgrade to XP on this machine?, I hate that if I need a better laptop I "must" use windows Vista, so, I need to know if this laptop is compatible with Windows XP, obviously the Gateway support doesn't tell you that and I know I'll have to search for drivers elsewhere, that's fine, I just want to know if DDR3 memory, video & sound card and chipset are still Windows XP compatible, any advice please let me know

Regards