List Price: $650
Official URL: http://www.gateway.com
Rating:

We all know the pain of purchasing a new computer only to have it be obsolete in a few short months. When I started hunting around for a new family computer I had a few objectives in mind. I wanted a machine that would be powerful enough to run a variety of applications I use in my life: Web browsers (with heavy Flash needs for the kids), Photoshop Elements and appointment calendars, recipe books and other incidentals. I wanted a machine that would allow other members of my family to play games (though I didn’t raise heavy “gamers”, the husband plays a bit too much!). I wanted a computer that I could hook up to a TV tuner so I could record some shows and do other multimedia stuff. I wanted a computer that could also handle some basic take home work from my office or my husband’s. Basically I wanted an all-around multipurpose machine that was affordable and that wouldn’t be obsolete quite as quickly as other computers have been in the past. The Gateway GT5674 fits the bill.. Mostly.

FEATURES

The Gateway GT5674 is a compact little tower computer measuring 15.6” (H) x 7.2” (W) x 16.1” (D). It boasts an AMD Phenom 9500 quad-core processor that runs at 2.2Ghz, 3GB RAM, and a 500GB SATA II hard drive. These are specs commonly seen in lower-end workstation computers! The thought of having this kind of power right at home, at home-computer prices was really exciting.

The GT5674 comes with a great little pair of amplified speakers, a multimedia keyboard, and a mouse. A fifteen-in-one memory card reader is built into the top of the computer, as is a hot-swappable portable media drive that is great for backups. This machine has 6 USB2 ports, two of which are located at the front of the computer for easier access. The DVD+/-R/RW drive is equipped with Labelflash™ technology that allows you to actually burn high resolution labels directly onto the top surface of your DVDs in a brilliant blue that will stay unmarred by blemishes and scratches and will not fade or brown over time. Great for sending out attractive CDs or DVDs of your family photographs or for burning digital photo albums.

SETUP

Setup is quick and simple. The Gateway GT5674 comes with a poster-sized quick-start guide that allows even the most novice computer user to quickly figure out how to plug in the included keyboard, mouse and speakers and a monitor (monitor must be purchased separately).

When you first start up, a little dialog will come up telling you that Windows is “installing drivers”. Nothing needs to be done here. Your computer will automatically recognize and configure everything that needs to be recognized and configured.

The Security Center will tell you that no anti-virus is installed, don’t worry we’ll resolve this in a minute. Close that window and exit the “Welcome screen”. You’ll see a Norton trial installation window that’s been hiding behind everything else on the screen. Norton Internet Security is free for 60 days, or you can enter your serial number if you’ve purchased Norton already. If you install this, the Security Center warning will go away. (Personally I recommend the excellent free Avast! anti-virus to all home users, and the premium NOD32 by eset to anyone with a home business… But you can always give Norton a try for 60 days and see if it grows on you.)

Congratulations. You’ve set up the GT5674. That was easy, wasn’t it? Now all that’s left is customizing the interface to look the way you like, and installing all your applications.

DESIGN & AESTHETIC

The style of this computer is a sleek black shiny and slightly translucent plastic with brushed metal accents (that appear to be real metal rather than cheesy silver-painted plastic). The design is very functional with an easy to access optical drive, a flip-open panel that gives you easy access headphone and mic connectors and that protects the hot-swappable portable drive bay from dust and grime. Everything is easy to access and use. This functional design carries over to the inside of the computer where everything is easy to access for upgrades.

“Easy access” seems to have been the dogma with which this computer was designed. As well as functional, sleek and compact. No complaints there!

INCLUDED SOFTWARE

The GT5674 is relatively non-bogged down with the bloat and extras that you typically see on desktop computers. It is loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1, a 60 day trial subscription of Norton Internet Security , Microsoft Works 9, and 60 day trials of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007. A trial of AOL is also included.

The software is there if you want to use it, but you can easily get rid of it if you do not. Gateway has made the wonderful decision to not include the trial software on their system restore disc, which means that you can get a fully clean system by simply using the restore discs. This is a smart choice for the consumer computer industry where the only other way to get a clean system was to either go through extensive (and sometimes incomplete) uninstall procedures, or to purchase a separate copy of the operating system for hundreds of dollars. Both options were unacceptable.

After running the restore disks supplied by Gateway I had a perfectly clean system. My personal experience was that the stability of the machine markedly improved.

WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM

Vista has some great family-friendly features such as parental controls, multiple user accounts, and a fun “sidebar” that has widgets like a slide show to keep pictures of your family near while you’re working.

Parental Controls: The new parental controls that come with Vista are more advanced than many parental control suites that you might have looked into purchasing in the past. Using the Parental Controls control panel you can customize exactly what each child in your family is allowed to do. From blocking inappropriate sites (or choosing which sites your child is allowed to visit), to controlling which games your child is allowed to play on the computer (or husband!), and right down to setting up what hours of what days they are allowed to log onto the computer. Activity reports even allow you to monitor what your child has been doing while logged on. Parental controls are wonderful for setting hard limits on when and how your child can use the computer. Is “after dinner” reserved for your husband to work from home? Is the block of time just after school the best time for your junior high school student to work on his homework? Eliminate arguments by simply setting parental controls to reserve these blocks of time for those that are supposed to be using the computer. (Read More About Parental Controls)

Multiple User Accounts: Multiple user accounts allow you to let your youngest children use the computer without worrying about them deleting your important work files. It also allows your teenage son to have “wallpaper” depicting a scene from his favorite movie, and your five year old daughter to have a fluffy kitten background. More importantly, it allows you to set up multiple parental control sets which means that you can allow your older and more mature children (and husband) to have more freedom on the computer while keeping your younger children safe from images of violence or sexuality that she might not yet understand.

Sidebar Widgets: Sidebar Gadgets are a new feature to Vista. By default, a sidebar will show up on the right side of your desktop (this can be customized) and shows a variety of gadgets that you can choose. You can add a clock, a slideshow of photographs, sticky notes, and a variety of other gadgets that ship with Vista, or you can download a wide variety of widgets from Microsoft’s Gadget gallery. Gadgets run the gamut from games and other fun things, to actual productivity tools.

One Downside of Vista: The only possible downside of Vista is that many children’s games were created with Windows 98 or even Windows 95 in mind. These may not run very well on Vista, although all the games and applications we tried worked great.

DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS

Processor: The Quad Core 2.2 GHz AMD Phenom 9500 is a great workhorse processor and you’ll find it to be very responsive. That said, four cores will most likely feel like a bit of overkill for most of the applications you’ll find yourself using. Very few consumer applications make use of dual cores let alone four cores. As more software takes advantage of multiple cores you’ll find that your system is able to keep up very nicely.

RAM: 3072MB (3GB) DDR2 RAM. Three Gigabytes of memory! This is more than enough for most families and it means that you can edit longer family movies, load up more photographs for retouching, and generally not worry about your computer slowing down while you’re multi-tasking. Older children will be thrilled as three gigs makes for great gaming.

Hard Drive: The 500GB Serial ATA II hard drive is fast, quiet, and offers a half a terabyte of space for storing your music files and photographs. (We all know how fast these files can eat up hard drive space!) I was impressed when a huge application that had taken 15 minutes to install on my old computer took only 30 seconds to install on the GT5674. At first I thought that there had been a mistake and that the application hadn’t actually installed. But there it was, ready to use.

L3 Cache: The 2MB L3 Cache optimizes the performance of the applications that you run and makes this computer feel even more peppy.

Video Chip: The integrated nVidia GeForce 6150 SE shares system memory and is one of the slower video chips still available on the market today. This is the weakest specification of this machine. If you’re planning on using this system for heavy gaming (however you define that) or any work that involves more intensive video operations (such as 3D) you’ll probably want to invest in a better video card. Just keep in mind that the system’s power supply is 300 watts, so you’ll have to be careful not to get a video card that draws too much power. That said, this machine was able to run everything that we tested on it, it just performed more slowly with some of the more modern games and intense applications. If you’re looking for a system with more robust video or gaming capabilities, take a look at Gateway’s FX line.

Ports & Connectivity: The GT5674 has one 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port), one fax/modem port six USB 2.0 ports, one VGA (monitor) port, and two PS/2 (keyboard/mouse) ports. Two of the USB ports are located on the front of the machine at the top. This is VERY good design for those of us with small children. My last computer’s USB ports were located at the front-bottom of my computer and were snapped off when a rampant toddler happened to step on them. Having the USB ports at the top is definitely better and it makes it easier to access as well.

Expansion Ports: If you open up the computer you’ll find that there is room for a second optical drive (DVD/CD), and a second internal SATA hard drive. There are also one PCI-E x16 slot, two free PCI Express x1 slots, and a lone PCI slot. (A modem occupies the PCI slot. If you do not need a modem you can remove the modem and substitute a PCI card of another sort.) You’ll have to be careful when choosing your expansion cards and when adding additional drives, as you don’t want to overtax the system’s 300 watt power supply. For example, if you add a more powerful video card you’ll want to avoid adding a second hard drive and optical drive. If you expand the storage space, you’ll want to go with a more mid-range video card. (OR, be happy with the abundance of features the unit already has, which are plenty.)

Memory Card Reader: The top part of the tower hosts a 15-in-one memory card reader that can handle Smart Media, CompactFlash I/II, Secure Digital, mini Secure Digital, xD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, MicroDrive, MultiMedia Card (MMC), Reduced Size-MMC, MMCplus and MMCmobile.

Speakers: These little speakers offer surprisingly good sound. They have one drawback (which is also a feature): they pull their power from one of your system’s USB plugs. If you’re short on space on your power strip, this is a feature. If you’re short on USB plugs, this might pose a problem. The speakers are of average size for computer speakers, and offer decent amplification.

Mouse: This little optical mouse is a pleasure to use. It has a familiar “computer mouse” shape but with an updated look and a comfortable rubberized surface for your hand. The scroll wheel works smoothly and without jumping. Since there is no ball in this mouse it’s easy to clean and doesn’t require a special mousing surface. The cable is of average length, so if you keep your computer under your desk you might want to invest in a USB extension cable for the mouse. It would have been nice if the mouse were PS/2, as it would have saved you one of the 6 USB slots.

Keyboard: The bundled keyboard is a PS/2 keyboard that has a wide stable base, a rubbery “pleather” style wrist support, and multimedia keys. The top of the keyboard offers common multimedia features such as browsing and volume controls. The keys are: Sleep: Puts your computer to sleep to save power without shutting down (located on the upper left of the keyboard above the ESC key) Home, Search, Calculator: Takes your browser to its home page or search page, and brings up the Windows calculator tool (Located toward the right-of center of the keyboard above the scroll lock and pause/break keys), and the audio playback controls to allow you to control system volume and track control for supported media applications (Audio Play/Pause, Previous track, Next track, Audio stop, Mute audio, Decrease volume, Increase volume).

One very nice thing about this keyboard is that it doesn’t seem to require special drivers (although drivers are available on the Gateway website if they are needed). The keyboard works with default installations of Vista, and all of the multimedia keys that I tried functioned perfectly with no additional software. The keys have a bit of a “mushy” feeling to them, so if you’re used to a laptop keyboard or like clickier keyboards you might need to adjust yourself to this style.

BOTTOM LINE

This computer is a great machine for the price. It has many strengths and only one significant weakness (video). If you’re looking for a lot of power at a low price the Gateway GT5674 meets those requirements without much compromise in quality.