I bought this machine to get top-of-the-heap performance: At the time I was in the market, Gateway had the largest hard disks and monitors available in a package, and also the best front-of-box connections (USB and firewire). BTW, I decided on Pentium 4 over Athlon in hopes of future software support.

The machine: It's incredibly fast. The hard disk is huge. The screen is excellent (I got the VX1120); at 1600x1200 it's sharp and flicker-free.

HOWEVER, this is also the most unstable computer I've ever had. IE crashes frequently. OUT OF THE BOX, Windows Media Player would crash in a repeatable fashion on many different sites.

And when the modem failed, tech support refused to believe it was a hardware problem (it was obvious to me that it was), and wanted me to wipe the hard disk and re-install everything. They were pleasant throughout but maintained this ridiculous position. After days of increasingly nasty escalation, I finally talked to somebody who sent me a new modem, which fixed the problem. (The upside: I get to say "told you so!" to Gateway.)

Oh, and when Gateway first shipped me the unit, they sent me somebody else's PC, configured completely differently from mine. I didn't get the right computer for another week after that. Then they tried to bill me for the extra computer, which I had already sent back. Again, the support people were very polite and professional and fixed the problems as quickly as they could, but it was very annoying to deal with these delays and problems, to say the least.

In sum: Steer clear of Gateway products. They're nice folks, but there's too much ineptness there to deal with.





Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 3500+
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50