Gateway-Desktop Reviews

This machine will change your life. No more rushing home to watch a show, picking up five remotes trying to figure out which ones which, shssing your spouse until the important part of the show passes, switching CDs in your player, hooking the video camera up to the VCR to watch it, having a stack of stereo components, pulling out photo albums, etc. I could go on and on. This new design is extraordinary. My wife is nuts for this for it's simplicity. Stop reading this and buy one immediately.

The sleek look and ease of use of the Gateway FMC-901 make it a great choice if you want the features of a Media Center Edition PC but don't want a clunky PC in the family room.
I couldn't see paying the extra price tag on the 901X just to get the Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card and the DVD burner. So if playing games and recording to DVD media isn't important, the lower cost unit may be suitable for most needs.

It's true that you can get a decent desktop pc...these days. But that usually means (at best) 256 mb ram, 40 gb hard drive, a modest pentium 4 processor and a big ol' crt-monitor that takes up a lot of space on your desk. However, if you invest a little more you can end up with the Gateway 500x with 512 mb ram, a 120 gb hard drive (I axed the printer and upgraded the hard drive instead), P4 2.53 ghz processor and a sweet 17" flat panel monitor. I've had my 500x for a few months now and absoultely love it. If my buddy Renato were here he'd give you all the overly in-depth technical details, but he's not so here's the deal in laymen's terms: Unless you're a heavy (and I stress heavy) duty gamer or do tons of video editing, the 500x has more than enough muscle to meet your everyday computing needs (and then some), including web surfing and downloading all your favorite images, movie and sound clips. Both the cd and dvd drives have worked flawlessly for me. I work with multiple applications open at all times (including those that are known to be resource hogs) and have had zero reliablity problems with virtually no notice of speed degradation. Everything about this machine has been rock solid and it performs tasks at a blindingly fast speed. The sound system and video graphics are great. For the price and quality, you could do a heck of a lot worse than the Gateway 500x (and not that much better).

Most people who buy a pc do so for predictable uses: wordprocessing, games, internet, and off the shelf software. Even for those who deem themselves power users often find that one pc is pretty much like the other. The tiebreaker in the decision to buy is often a function of price and aesthetic appeal. The GATEWAY 700X desktop is a harmonious blend of the very best qualities that one could seek in a computer. I have a Master's in Computer Technology so I already knew its potential before I bought it, but when I had a chance to put it through it paces over an extended period of time, I was enormously impressed. First the obvious: it did whatever I asked it to in quick time. Whenever a potential buyer checks out computers, he most often looks at the CPU speed as a barometer of how fast the CPU works. This GATEWAY 700X boasts a 2.533 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, but it is not for that which invests it with lightning. Of equal importance to the CPU numbers is the less recognized internal bus speed. A modest bus number is 133. The GATEWAY 700X hums along at 266, a number sufficiently quick to make even jaded power users smile. When I go online, from the time I start to the time that I am ready to chat is measured in seconds. On my previous Compaq Presario, I had to wait nearly four full minutes for that. Computer salesman like to trump the size of a pc's hard disk storage. When I first bought a pc more than 10 years ago, it had 10 GB for storage, and I never came close to using it all. This GATEWAY has 80 GB, so it's nice to know that if you plan to input a database of several million items, you need not worry about exceeding your hard drive's capacity. The 18 inch LCD flat-panel monitor presents both text and visuals with crystal clarity--no eyestrain here! The speakers are far more sensitive to nuances in sound than you might be used to. The CD/DVD combo works quite well. The numbers bandied about for such devices (48x/40x/12x for the CD and 16x for the DVD) simply mean that what you see on the screen is about a clear as you can get. Not many users care about such arcane concepts as expansion slots. I'll be willing to bet that most do not even know what an expansion slot is, but for those readers of this review who do, rest assured that this pc can be bulked up to rival Colossus in THE FORBIN PROJECT. Further, for those with digital video on the mind, the GATEWAY 700X is a sterling, reliable performer. Finally, the GATEWAY 700X even looks good. Its ergonomic appeal is not unlike the feeling that you might have felt the first time you slipped behind the wheel of your first Corvette. What all the numbers in the salesman's brochures boil down to is this: you can probably find any number of computers that are comparable, but only a few can often first rate performance and reliability at a price that won't bust your wallet. The GATEWAY 700X is just such a computer.

I got one as an all-in-one center for images, video, TV, music, etc. It does the job well. TV image quality is excellent, and so is TV recording. Burning your favorite shows to DVD with a few button clicks is incredibly easy.
If you want something for your den, this is a machine that should definitely be on your list for consideration.

The Gateway FMC-901X blends an innovative case design with high performance components. The first thing that strikes you about the Gateway Media Center is that it looks more like a piece of stereo equipment than a computer. In fact the stackable design computer is fits perfectly on top of a VCR or stereo. This was a big selling point with my wife.

The next best feature is that it comes a super-sized 250GB hard drive with a personal video recorder that lets you record TV shows and watch them on your schedule. The advantage over Tivo is there's no monthly fee or any way for some corporation to keep track of what you watch and when.

Now from the comfort of your couch, you can watch video, TV, play digital music, watch digital video, surf the Internet, play games, arrange digital photos and play or record DVDs.

Finally a piece of gear that looks like it belongs in an AV rack. I've been Very pleased with the appearance and usability of the system. Be aware that although it looks and performs like a component, it's also a PC. It comes with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. That means music- and photo-playback features are excellent, and the PVR functions are a close match for a dedicated TV recorder.

Since it's a computer and not a TV it takes a couple of minutes to boot-up. To power the media center, you need the remote control unit and the wireless keyboard and mouse. I've taken to leaving the system on all the time. The mouse uses a new motion-sensing technology that lets you control it with natural hand movements. Unlike most wireless mice, this one actually has range. I can still operate from outside the house through the window, 25 feet away, as long as I stay in the line of sight.

The AV-component look of the FMC-901X is helped by the flip-down panel on the front, which hides many of the myriad of controls and ports: FireWire port, two USB 2.0 jacks, and slots for Compact Flash, SD, Memory Stick, and Smart Media memory cards, making it easy to move digital photos & MP3's into the system.

Bottom-line: this system is perfect for any true media enthusiast

Not a bad system though I reccomend getting a bigger HDD drive. I've had Gateway's in the past and had no trouble with the tech support, but then I haven't had any serious problems with any of my Gateway systems.

Gateway award winning desktops are always a good choice for customers. I wasn't disapointed a bit with the feature set of this machine. 256MB of memory and a 15 inch LCD were the primary feature sets that seperated this product from the other machines.

Great computer with additional features (TV tuner, PVR, etc.), and it takes up very little space.

Wireless keyboard is a pain, however - its reception to the system is poor and it eats batteries like crazy.

TV reception is snowy - don't buy it for the TV, buy it for the compact computer and the convenience of having the other things attached. You'll still want a regular TV.

This would also be GREAT for a college student in a dorm room.

I bought this system about four months ago and I agree with a lot of the reviews I've read, both with the positive and the negative. If you're looking for a compact system that does a lot this is it, but keep that in mind in practical terms as well. This is a small unit but also very powerfull, and it requires a lot of "juice." I would advise anyone who'll be using it often to buy a UPS (power supply) if they don't have one already. For $50-$100 they can be life-savers, especially if you're like me and have the AC going a lot. It's also rather fragile because of how compact it is, so if you have young kids be carefull, especially with the DVD drive. The last drawback is upgrading, people should know that the 610 is not user upgradeable, or at least not for the average home user. You'll have to send it into Gateway to add more memory.

As others have said though, the size and the picture can't be beat. There's one wire to worry about, and that's a major victory in itself. I wish Gateway would be more lenient as far as allowing customers to configure their own systems (see the upgrade issue) like Dell and HP are, but neither of them offer anything comparable to the 610 yet. I really wish this type of system was around when I was in College, it's a bit expensive, but it's the dream system for any dorm.

I bought this a couple of months ago, and at first, got a lemon. It crashed continuously, and when I was on the phone with the tech guy "Larry" (who was obviously in India), it crashed when scanning the disk for errors. And the tech guy offered extremely simple advice that most people with any kind of computer experience would've tried before calling.

However, my replacement has been relatively pain-free. The only problem was that it crashed when I was trying to install the software for Verizon DSL service. You may run into problems there as Verizon said it was a problem with the system registry of the PC (I did manage a way to get around the problem and am happily using DSL today).

A primary reason for buying this computer was for its DVD-burning capability, and for the possibility of capturing VHS tapes onto the computer, and creating DVDs out of them. I was under the impression that I would be able to plug my VCR directly into the computer and capture the video into the computer and create DVDs. You can't do that however. You can plug the VCR into the 610XL, and watch the video in the media center under the gaming device section, but why anybody with a TV would do that is beyond me, as the video shows in a small 3X4" window. Converting VHS to DVD requires a capture device (I suggest the Canopus ADVC-100), and some editing software (ULead Video Studio 7.0 SE and DVD Movie Factory 2.0 have done the job for me). That means an extra $400.

The documentation/instruction booklet is not that great. It spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the TIVO-like qualities of this computer, which unfortunately at this time I'm not using. But I can't imagine a better, more compact PC for my purposes (Video capturing/editing, DVD burning) than this machine.

All I can say is I love It!
I'd give it 10 stars if I could.