Gateway DX4710-09 does not boot

On 7/28/2010 1:27 PM, SC Tom wrote:

"chicagofan" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:
I agree with Ben about Vista. When I got my Gateway notebook, it came
with
Vista, and after a couple of weeks in hell, I couldn't wait for
Windows 7 to
come out, hoping that it would be better. Thankfully, it is (at least
to me
it is, and I guess that's what counts).

Luckily, I followed the instructions on how to create a recovery DVD for
this machine since the hard drive went south about a month or two
after I
bought it. We won't go into the story of how pathetic Gateway's support
service is. Suffice it to say that after running around in circles
with them
for about 6 months, I never got a replacement drive for the one I
sent back.


Sorry about your problem. In all these years, I have never had to call
Gateway Support. Sure hope that continues, and you have no more
problems.
bj


I've had no problems since, except that there were never any Win7
drivers created/released for the for my notebook. It's an M6850-FX and
was only a little over a year old when Windows 7 came out. I've made do
with Vista and Intel drivers, and it runs great. I increased the RAM
from 3GB to 4GB, and swapped the T5550 CPU with a T8300. I bought it for
the dedicated video chip and video RAM, and have not been disappointed
with it other than the HDD crash and lack of support. It runs everything
I want to run, and runs it well, and that's what I wanted it to do.
Since upgrading to Win7, I have had no BSODs, which is more than I can
say about when I had Vista.

As a rule, none of the name brand marketing companies (they are
marketing companies, not manufacturers!) like Acer-eGateMachines, Dell,
HPaq, Lenovo, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Sony ever bothers to issue drivers for a
new operating system. Just ask what's in it for them? Customer
satisfaction adds $0.00 to the accounting ledger in the short term, so
why do it?

In other words, Gateway is no better and no worse than others in this
regard.

Fortunately, your M6850-FX is new enough and it uses mainstream chips
and chipsets, so you were able to find drivers elsewhere, not at the
Gateway web site. Also, Microsoft did not change the hardware driver
model going from Vista to Windows 7, so the Vista drivers generally work
with Windows 7. I guess they did not want to **** off the world again
with Windows 7. They customarily change driver models with major OS
releases, e.g. NT to 2000 to XP to Vista.

As a rule, drivers from Intel and other chip manufacturers are more up
to date and defect-free than the ones at the name brand company websites.

Lenovo, with its mostly business-oriented laptops does post some drivers
for operating systems newer than its laptops... Ben Myers