Specifications

PC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 www.pcmag.com
38
FIRST LOOKS
BY JOHN DELANEY
A
ll-in-one PCs aren’t a
big slice of the market,
but they have a devoted
audience among home and
SOHO buyers. Gateway has just
introduced the fourth genera-
tion of its space-saving machine.
The
Gateway Profile 4X brings
Pentium 4 (with Hyper-Thread-
ing) power and a host of other
improvements to the platform.
For consumers with limited
desktop real estate, the Profile
4
X falls somewhere in between a
full-blown desktop system and a
desktop replacement notebook.
But as with the latter, there are
trade-offs.
The Profile 4
X features a 2.4-
GHz Pentium 4 processor mar-
ried to an 800-
MHz front-side
bus (
FSB). As with other all-in-
ones, your post-purchase up-
grade options are limited. You
can add memory (up to 1
GB) or
swap out the hard drive. Any-
thing else will have to be con-
nected via one of the six
USB 2.0
or two FireWire ports, or insert-
ed into the
PC Card slot—which
is just begging for a wireless
LAN card, since an internal wire-
less
NIC isn’t offered.
The integrated 17-inch
LCD
display is driven by the 64MB
nVidia GeForce4 MX400 video
controller, a solid midrange
graphics solution. Image quality
on the panel is good from all
viewing angles. The integrated
speaker/SoundMax audio com-
bination is a weak spot, sound-
ing only slightly better than the
cheap desktop speakers that
most vendors ship with entry-
level systems.
To ensure compatibility with
legacy components, the Profile
includes parallel, serial, and
PS/2
ports, as well as a
VGA monitor
port. A multimedia keyboard and
a Logitech
USB optical mouse are
included in the package. The
software bundle is fairly minimal,
consisting of Windows
XP Home
Edition, Microsoft Works Suite
2003, and Gateway’s Music Vault
jukebox utility.
Gateway’s All-in-One Gets a Boost
Performance (25.2 on our
Business Winstone 2002 test
and 38.0 on Multimedia Content
Creation Winstone 2003) was
fine for typical productivity
chores, but not near what a cur-
rent state-of-the-art desktop
tower can deliver. Of course, a
better comparison might be
with a desktop replacement
notebook, since these are target-
ing the same space-constrained
crowd. Here the Gateway Pro-
file 4
X tops most, though note
that the fastest notebooks are
scoring around 32 on Business
Winstone and 42 on Content
Creation Winstone.
In its favor, the Profile 4
X de-
livers a desktop-quality
LCD
screen and a full complement of
ports. So if you don’t mind sac-
rificing expandability to save
desktop space and are not
ready to take the notebook
plunge, the Gateway Profile
4
X is a good compromise.
Gateway Profile 4X
With 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor,
256MB SDRAM, 80GB hard drive,
nVidia GeForce4 MX400 graphics,
17-inch LCD, CD-RW/DVD-ROM
drive, 10/100 Ethernet,
$1,499.99 direct. Gate-
way Inc., 800-221-9616,
www.gateway.com.
OVERALL RATING lllmm
M lllmm
P llmmm
V llmmm
Pioneer Delivers Quad-Format DVD Writer
BY DON LABRIOLA
A
s the originator of DVD-
R technology, Pioneer
has been that format’s
staunchest proponent. But in
a nod to the competition, the
new
Pioneer DVR-A06 adds sup-
port for the rival
DVD+R and
DVD+RW formats.
In most other ways, the
DVR-
A06 is similar to its DVR-A05
predecessor. Both boast robust
construction, 4
XDVD-R and 2X
DVD
-RW recording, and a con-
sistent ability to produce discs
that work reliably in every
DVD
player in our lab. The A06 ships
with a generous software bundle
that includes Ahead Software’s
Nero Express 5.5 and Nero
Toolkit, the
SAI WriteDVD!
drive letter access and packet-
writing software, and special
editions of Ulead
DVD Player,
MovieFactory, PictureShow, and
VideoStudio.
When tested on our 2.5-
GHz
P4 test-bed (using Nero 6 Burn-
ing
ROM), the DVR-A06 easily
equaled the
A05’s blazing speed
with
DVD-R and -RW media,
and generally outpaced the
competing Sony
DRU-500A
multiformat burner. Most im-
pressive, the
A06 took only 4
minutes 21 seconds to rip our
4.28
GB test DVD, compared
with the
A05’s 6:20 and the Sony
unit’s 10:30 time.
Our early production unit
worked well enough with its
bundled software but wasn't as
hospitable to some of the appli-
cations in our test suite. Neither
321 Studio’s
DVD XCopy disc
backup application nor Ahead’s
InCD 4 packet-writing software
could record
DVD+RW media in-
serted into the drive. (The com-
panies are working on fixes as
we go to press). Worse, the
A06’s
setup routine forces you to load
all of its bundled applications—
a source of conflict if you've al-
ready installed and prefer a
competing disk-mastering or
packet-writing application.
Another disappointment is
the drive’s lack of support for 4
X
DVD
+RW recording, which is of-
fered by Sony’s recently an-
nounced four-format
DRU-510A.
So if
DVD+RW is your preferred
medium, the Sony unit is a bet-
ter choice. But if your tasks de-
mand a multiformat drive, the
A06 ought to do a good job at a
competitive price.
Pioneer DVR-A06
$330 street. Pioneer Electronics
(USA) Inc., 800-444-6784, www
.pioneerelectronics.com.
lllmm
All scores are in minutes:seconds.
Low scores are best.
Bold type denotes first place.
Rip 4.3GB DVD
image to hard drive
4X DVD-R 2X DVD-RW
Pioneer DVR-A06
4:21 14:35 28:09
Pioneer DVR-A05*
6:20 14:49 28:15
Sony DRU-500A*
10:30 16:06 29:38
4X DVD+R 2.4X DVD+RW
Create
640MB CD-R
13:46 22:35 7:21
N/A N/A 7:15
15:05 22:30 7:34
Drag 55MB folder
to CD-RW
(packet writing)
0:57
1:20
0:58
Burn 4.3GB image to DVD
* Reported for comparison. N/A—Not applicable: The drive does not support this format.
DVD RECORDERS: WRITE SPEED
The Gateway Profile 4X features a 17-inch LCD.