![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Gateway P-7805u $1050 @ BB
- Thread starter BMWfreak
- Start date
Several people on notebookreview have put BD-Roms in them so far. It uses a standard SATA tray load notebook drive. Swap is cake, remove the little plastic plug on the bottom, remove a screw, pull the drive out, swap face plates and install the new one.
I went to BestBuy and checked it out.. After a LOOOONNNNGGG wait for help I bought it. As big mike said, it's a piece of cake to do the swap. Peel off a small rubber cover, unscrew one phillips screw and out it comes. It is a SATA drive (contrary to what the Gateway tech emailed me -- he said IDE). The only thing about swapping the drive for a blu-ray is you'd have to use the original beveled faceplate for it to look right.. This also doesn't look too hard, but I didn't get that far into it without the replacement. Newegg has 2 Sony models (BC-5500 & BC-5600) for $309 that appear to be the slot loading type (instead of the sliding tray type). Found them on ebay for about $150. I'll let you know how it goes...
Uh, it has one empty hard drive bay, the other one has the stock scorpio in it normally. And the second internal mini PCI-E is a half length so your choices for it are limited, they do make short 5100 and 5300 wifi cards (but why when you already have one unless you want to free up the original slot for a different full length like a tv tuner) or you can throw a half sized robson in there or something. Bluetooth you're better off to just put in the dedicated module, it's a LOT of work, but there's a spot for it already. I put up a post on notebookreview about it. You can see my walkthrough which may also answer some other questions at:
www.bigwheezy.com/7805/bt.html
hellowifi on ebay has these modules for like 25 bucks, they were great to deal with and I got the wrong one the first time trying to find a compatible unit and they sent me the right cable out to try from the 7811FX and it worked.
Some people reported that slot loaders didn't really mesh with the aesthetics very well since the stock faceplate is so large. If you do go with a slot loader though there was an older model that had a slot load (P-171FX, P-173FX or one of the 68XX series FX, I can't remember which one off hand) that might have a face plate you could use if you can find a drive from one.
The HL CT10N and Sony BC-5500S have both been reported to work for tray loaders
Any of you with the 1440 native resolution screen, how is it for gaming? The reason I ask is that all the new batches being shipped out to Best Buy stores have pretty much ended up being this resolution. Still debating it, and wondering if it's a big deal or not for a primary gaming system overseas.
I would think you would get better frames with the less res? If your not working on anything i would think it would be fine.
I bought this laptop... couldnt pass it up for the price... i love it... but is it necessary to have a cooler under it when playing games? It gets pretty hot.
I bought this laptop... couldnt pass it up for the price... i love it... but is it necessary to have a cooler under it when playing games? It gets pretty hot.