(Not an ad!) Looking for an impossible-to-find Gateway Laptop

[HarveyHouston]

Okay, I am at my wits end. I'm looking for a laptop that is to be a gift for a friend, and all I want is for it to have three qualifications:

• Gateway brand.
• Built-in optical drive.
• Windows 11 capable.

...And I've found nothing. Does such a device exist?!? It doesn't have to be the latest and greatest; just a laptop from up to five years ago will work (but no further back than 2017).

 

[SylverReZ]

Okay, I am at my wits end. I'm looking for a laptop that is to be a gift for a friend, and all I want is for it to have three qualifications:

• Gateway brand.
• Built-in optical drive.
• Windows 11 capable.

...And I've found nothing. Does such a device exist?!?

Gateway branded laptops are nowadays just rebranded cheap Chinesium laptops sold by Wal-Mart of all places, you best be off getting something a lot more decent. Also, most laptops never have optical drives anymore, you can however buy an external optical drive and use that.

 

[Hayato213]

Built-in optical drive.

I highly doubt there are any brand new gateway laptop that have built-in optical drive

 

[HarveyHouston]

Gateway branded laptops are nowadays just rebranded cheap Chinesium laptops sold by Wal-Mart of all places, you best be off getting something a lot more decent.

Probably, but I just want to know if there are any options. I'll decide how crappy they are once I know of one or more models I can look at.

 

[SylverReZ]

I found this: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-...128GB-SSD-Windows-11-S/996759914?athbdg=L1800

 

[HarveyHouston]

I found this: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-...128GB-SSD-Windows-11-S/996759914?athbdg=L1800

No optical drive. I ran across that too.

 

[SylverReZ]

No optical drive. I ran across that too.

Like I said, there's not going to be a laptop with an optical drive nowadays. Your only solution on having one is to buy an external drive, which doesn't cost a whole lot.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Like I said, there's not going to be a laptop with an optical drive nowadays. Your only solution on having one is to buy an external drive, which doesn't cost a whole lot.

It doesn't have to be the absolute latest model. One from up to five years ago that meets these specs I will look into.

 

[SylverReZ]

It doesn't have to be the absolute latest model. One from up to five years ago that meets these specs I will look into.

Look at places such as eBay and you might hopefully find one that does have an ODD.

 

[Hayato213]

It doesn't have to be the absolute latest model. One from up to five years ago that meets these specs I will look into.

You probably have to look for mid 2010's laptop then, it might be hard to find one that support windows 11, windows 11 require Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0.

Post automatically merged: Nov 7, 2022

The optical drive thing can be easily solved with usb to optical drive if your friend is okay with that.

 

[SylverReZ]

You probably have to look for mid 2010's laptop then, it might be hard to find one that support windows 11, windows 11 require Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0.

You can also use a modified version of Windows 11 with the TPM check removed.

 

[HarveyHouston]

You can also use a modified version of Windows 11 with the TPM check removed.

This is what I get for asking in a hacking community... LOL, JK. It might be worth a shot.

You probably have to look for mid 2010's laptop then, it might be hard to find one that support windows 11, windows 11 require Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0. The optical drive thing can be easily solved with usb to optical drive if your friend is okay with that.

Yeah, that may have to be the only way I can resolve this issue. Any backlit keyboard options there?

 

[SylverReZ]

The optical drive thing can be easily solved with usb to optical drive if your friend is okay with that.

That's what I was exactly referring to. They usually cost around $10 to maybe $30 USD I believe.

 

[orangy57]

pretty sure Gateway has only really been targeting fairly low-budget systems after they bought out emachines in the 2000s. Most laptops today won't come with optical drives anymore, let alone budget laptops since they've been on the way out for years now.

The only results i can find of Gateway laptops that advertise disk drives are ones from the early 2010s with the ancient anemic AMD APUs. If your friend is okay with getting a laptop with a different brand you could definitely strike a way better deal on a 2010s laptop with an Intel CPU and a disk drive like an older Dell Latitude or an HP Pavilion. I'd recommend getting an AMD Ryzen laptop, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one with a disk drive. NOTE: If you start shopping around, avoid AMD's "A-Series" and "E-Series" Processors like the plague.

 

[fringle]

I personally don't think you're going to have a very good experience with running windows 11 on a 2010 laptop. CPU's of that time are not optimized for it at all and will generally run quite poorly. Especially if it's an older AMD APU. I had an old laptop from 2011 with an i3 that I installed Windows 10 on and it did not run very well at all.

 

[HarveyHouston]

I personally don't think you're going to have a very good experience with running windows 11 on a 2010 laptop. CPU's of that time are not optimized for it at all and will generally run quite poorly. Especially if it's an older AMD APU. I had an old laptop from 2011 with an i3 that I installed Windows 10 on and it did not run very well at all.

Yes, I can imagine. Fortunately, I am not looking for something quite so old.

 

[FAST6191]

re: USB optical drives.
If you are willing to have a bit more of a chonker of a laptop then I could see a path to internalising such a toy (probably also a USB hub, and if it has a nice USB C on it then maybe something coming out of that) by adapting some kind of shell, cooling jacket or the like.