Bought a Refurb/Return/Open Box
Written: Mar 31 '07
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Pros: Fast, media center, PC
Cons: Small power supply
The Bottom Line: Looking for a deal, want some power, this is a pretty good choice
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| fofa's Full Review: Gateway GT5034 (827103078138) PC Desktop |
Since these are still available, and you might be considering one, I figured I would put my 2 cents in.
As of this writing (03/31/2007) I have been using my second one for 2 months now. I am not going to bore with the actual specs, you can find that easy enough either here, or online. So I am going to speak from a user standpoint, things that really mean something to me.
1 - I needed to upgrade my old 4+ year old PC which was a dual processor AMD 1000 with 512 MB of ram and a 60GB HDD. Just so you know where I was at. I never buy the latest and greatest, because I find a few month old model is cheaper, and not much slower than the most current over priced models. My opinion.
So the search began, and I ran across this Gateway at GlobalComputer (TigerDirect has the SAME thing, exactly). The specs were right (I wanted something I could upgrade to Vista on). So I bought one.
2 - New computer arrived, I had backed up my old one to re-recordable DVD's. So I set it up, power it on, Beeps a couple times, keeps beeping.
Email gateway tech. support.
Over the course of the next 5-6 days gateway tech,. support and I got it to boot (by swapping memory modules around), but after using it for awhile it would crash and burn with a system error. Gateway said it was a hardware problem. I contacted GlobalComputer, told them the situation, they authorized an RMA (return) right off. Plus they setup UPS to come pick it up. Then the choice, wait for the return, verification the system was returned in tact (I didn't keep any parts) and then they would send another one, or charge me again, send one out right away and when the verification was done credit my credit card. I choose the later.
3 - New computer arrived about 5 days later. Set it up, booted, it worked. Enabled Microsoft Windows update, and went through a download, upgrade, reboot cycle a few times.
4 - That was when the display started flashing. Because of the timing of the flashing, I figured it had something to do with one of Microsoft's patches. Email Gateway tech. support. They said, reload the system (I was getting good at that by now) and DO NOT TURN ON WINDOWS UPDATE. Gateway does not support updates by third party (read Microsoft) parties.
Gateway does supply a program (BigFix) that downloads and loads patches Gateway deems safe. The new Daylight Savings Time patch was NOT one of those however.
5 - Reload, apply approved Gateway patches, system has been working fine since then. Even when I applied the unapproved Daylight Savings Time patch.
Ok, now I have a good working system, so what does that mean. Well this PC boots pretty fast. I dabble in graphics, and 3d rendering and Photoshop Elements really flies on this baby. The Dual Core CPU allows multiple tasks to proceed without interruption (but since I had a two processor one I was used to that). You don't get those annoying halts when listening to music and you are working on "stuff" like single CPU's do sometimes. Same with video.
I am not PC gamer, I have a PS2 for that, so I can't tell you how it does from that aspect.
About the only thing I have NOT liked about this, but to me personally is not a big deal, is the TV card works like Tivo, where it records the TV broadcast to the hard drive, so you can pause the live TV, ect. This is configurable as to how much disk space it can use, but I find I get pauses in the live TV broadcast as it writes to the disk off and on. I have not found of way of just watching live TV without recording it to disk. But I have a real TV right next to the computer, so not a big issue, I watch that.
It has a built in media card reader. I no longer need to have my old card reader attached via a USB port. I can just plug them in, much nicer since I take a good amount of digital pictures. I have 4 cameras, and 3 different types of memory cards (CF, SD and XD) and it takes all of them. Have never had a glitch with the card reader, and I have used it a lot.
No Diskette drive. Do not find this a big issue, except I had a few things backed up on some diskettes I needed. Had to dump those on my daughters computer, and access them via the home network. But something you may want to consider if you have diskettes.
The on board nVidea 6100 video card uses system memory (up to 512MB) for the display. Not a big issue running Windows Xp Media Center that comes with the PC, but a Vista upgrade might make that a biog deal. I am planning on adding a Radeon X1600 video card and disabling the on board video to free the memory back up for the system. Why do I mention this you ask? Because this PC comes with a 350 Watt power supply. So you are either limited to the add ons you can use (can't draw too much power) or you have to upgrade the power supply. The Radeon is spec'd to use a 350 watt power supply (there are others also, I just found that one on sale online and got a good price is all).
I would say overall this is a good PC, and pretty good deal. I like to keep PC's for 4-5 years now that the software is not out pacing the hardware near as frequently. I think this one with the additional video card will be more than sufficient for that.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 649.97
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD K-2
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
fofa
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Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 2 members
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