I just picked up a Gateway LT3103u which comes with Vista. Reports say that Windows 7 runs far better on netbooks than Vista, and I had a shiny new Windows 7 RC DVD that I got from the NECC 2009 trade show.

Upon installing, everything worked except for the wireless network card, and trying to find drivers seemed hopeless. Gateway has nothing on their site at all. The machine appears to be a rebranded Acer of sorts, but the drivers from their site didn’t work either.

So, in the original Vista installer, there’s a Gateway Recovery Application which allows you to burn a driver DVD as well as system restore DVD’s. I’d recommend doing both, in case you ever want to revert, but for Windows 7, you will need to burn the driver DVD at a minimum.

Once you have said DVD, install Windows 7. After you are booted up, put in the driver DVD, and let it run the Autorun application. From there, select “Contents” and then scroll down to the Atheros Wireless LAN HB95 driver, and install it. Note that there’s also an HB63 driver, as well as a Broadcom driver. Neither of those is what you want.

After installing, your card should be working. After allowing Windows to update itself a bit, the ATI graphics driver will also be installed, providing for proper screen resolution.

So now I have Windows 7 on the machine, and Device Manager shows all hardware as working properly with drivers installed.

If I find other things that should be mentioned here, I’ll add them as they come up.

Update: I also needed to install the Synaptics Touchpad driver from the Driver DVD in order to get scrolling to work, as well as the multitouch gestures.

Update: I have had several requests for the wireless driver from that DVD. It’s located at the following URL: Atheros HB95 Vista/Win7 Driver. I assume that this is free to publish, as it comes with every Gateway, but if I receive a request to remove the link, I will do so.

Update: Gateway now appears to have a full set of Windows 7 drivers on their Support site, both for 32 and 64 bit Windows 7.