New Gateway Desktop Takes on Look of iMac, but Can’t Match It
If you’ve lusted after Apple’s sleek, one-piece iMac desktop computers but have no interest in switching to the Mac, you’re in luck this holiday season. Two of the big Windows PC makers, Gateway and Dell, will offer their own all-in-one desktops, which — like the iMac — are designed for style and pack an entire computer into a svelte body that looks like it’s merely a monitor.
The Gateway One
Both new contenders, oddly, are named “One.” I’ve been testing the Gateway One, which can be preordered now at beautyofone.com, and is set for delivery this month. It will also be available at Best Buy stores. Dell’s entry, called the XPS One, will be unveiled later, though Dell is already teasing it on a page buried within its huge Web site.
All-in-one desktops have been around for many years, but they failed to win a big slice of the consumer market. The iMac has been a success, however, partly because it combines beauty and power. It is speedy and can even optionally run Windows. Another factor is that mainstream, nontechie, nongamer consumers are gradually turning away from clunky towers toward laptops and other smaller forms.
Like the iMac, the Gateway One is striking, though the two products look very different. While the latest iMac has a brushed-aluminum front with a black border around the screen, the front of the One is all black, clad in a seamless sheet of plastic. The iMac sits on an aluminum foot; the One’s bottom edge rests directly on the desktop, supported by a small tilting metal stand in the rear.
I can’t recommend the Gateway over the iMac, however. It offers smaller screens and lower resolution — huge factors in an all-in-one machine — for prices that can exceed the iMac’s. It starts up and restarts more slowly. Unlike the Apple, it comes with annoying trial software. It also is noisier than the iMac, and lacks a built-in Web camera. Plus, twice during my few days of testing, it crashed with a blue screen, losing all open data.
The Gateway One comes in three models, priced at $1,299, $1,499 and $1,799. Unlike the iMac, which comes in two screen sizes, 20-inch and 24-inch, Gateway is offering only one screen size across the entire line: 19-inch, considered a middling dimension these days for a desktop. Best Buy has an exclusive on the low-end and high-end models. The midrange model will be sold directly by Gateway. All can be bought only with Windows Vista, not Windows XP.
Shockingly, for those who still cling to the notion that Windows machines are always priced lower than comparable Macs, the entry-level Gateway One costs $100 more than the entry-level iMac, which is $1,199. And the less expensive Mac gives you more in several key areas: a slightly larger screen with much higher resolution, a faster processor and a better video system.
At the high end, the $1,799 Gateway One has a much smaller screen than the comparably priced iMac, which sports a huge 24-inch display with much better resolution for the same price. The $1,799 iMac also has a faster processor. All the iMacs come with a better operating system and better bundled multimedia software.
Apple also offers a built-in camera, while Gateway’s is an ugly snap-on gadget that ruins the lines of the design. On my test model, the camera never stayed on straight and the videos it made contained so much background noise as to be worthless. This may have come from the One’s fan, which seemed to run a lot.
But the Gateway offers some advantages. At every price point it has more memory than the iMac — double the amount in the base model and triple in the $1,799 model. The One also has larger hard disks — 320 gigabytes in the base model compared with Apple’s 250 gigabytes, and 500 gigabytes in its top model compared with 320 gigabytes on the same-price iMac.
The Gateway also has a wireless keyboard and mouse, which cost extra from Apple, plus built-in slots for camera memory cards, which Apple doesn’t offer. On the high-end model, Gateway throws in an external TV tuner, something Apple doesn’t include.
Gateway also boasts that, unlike the iMac, its One model has only a single, thick cord protruding from its rear. This is partly due to the standard wireless keyboard and mouse, but mostly it’s due to the fact that, unlike on the iMac, the power supply isn’t built in but is contained in a bulky, heavy module meant to rest on the floor. This power module contains the networking port and a few other ports meant for peripherals you don’t plug in and out often.
The One started up faster than some other Vista machines I tested, but it’s still slow compared with even an older, 20-inch iMac. It scored very well on Vista’s built-in performance rating, garnering a 4.4. But my high-end iMac, set up to run Vista, scored a 5.0.
The Gateway One may appeal to style-conscious Windows users, but I think the iMac remains the best consumer desktop on the market.
Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.
Comments
Why would anyone pay more for a machine that’s slower, has a smaller screen, lower resolution, is noiser, has no built-in webcam, and comes pre-loaded with crapware?
I’d buy the iMac, and with the $100 saved I’d buy more memory.
Posted by Steve Klein at October 31st, 2007 at 8:21 pmThis system is a non-starter to anyone with even 1/2 a brain. For a business user this all-in-one is too expensive–most businesses use cheap, generic Dell boxes– and offers little expansion and it comes with vista. No, thank you. For a home user the Mac is clearly better in more ways than I can count.
It’s no wonder Apple now sells more computers than gateway. If this is all they can offer they might as well just pack it in.
Posted by Hal Summers at October 31st, 2007 at 9:20 pmOkay so it looks like a iMac. Not! Sorry for that comment. I really appreciate it when Walt does a review. He holds no punches and states the facts. They say that (imitation) is the most sincerest form of flattery. Well, then here you have it in plain sight.
Thank you Gateway and Dell for giving iMacs and Apple kudos.
Great job Walt keep up the reviews.
Posted by Caleb Rodriguez at November 1st, 2007 at 5:45 amAlthough I do appreciate Walt’s honesty (and obvious bias towards Apple products), I wish he would perhaps state some of the good things regarding this machine in the first 2/3 of the column. I was ready to stop reading because every other sentence gives a reference to a Mac. He begins by saying
“If you’ve lusted after Apple’s sleek, one-piece iMac desktop computers but have no interest in switching to the Mac, you’re in luck this holiday season”
but then proceeds to bash the Gateway with repeated comparisons to the Mac. Ridiculous.
Posted by Adan Galvan at November 1st, 2007 at 8:25 amI do not see how one can speak of price comparisons when the DRAM and CPU speed, wireless mouse and keyboard, and really cool idea for the network cable are so much different (better?) in the Gateway.
I think belittling the 19″ display for the Gateway is a bit overdone. 19″ is quite nice in a flat display.
Posted by Richard Mitnick at November 1st, 2007 at 10:53 amWhy not just buy an iMac and run Windows XP under BootCamp or Parallels or Fusion?
Posted by Dave Barnes at November 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pmI am surprised that Walt didn’t mention that the all in one cable idea was actually borrowed and from Apple.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....._Connector
Although, it was a great idea, Apple discontinued it because people didn’t like the fact that the cable was non standard.
Posted by Terrin Bell at November 1st, 2007 at 6:20 pmHow come not many people know that Macs cost less than a computer from Gateway?
Posted by Neil Anderson at November 3rd, 2007 at 3:30 pmResponding to stupid comments by Adan Galvan at November 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am.
First off, why do you claim Walt is “biased” against the Mac, simply because he is able to say more positive about the Mac. Couldn’t this simply be because the Mac has more positive things about it? As such, if someone is simply noting or listing these positive qualities, this is hardly a sign of bias! In fact, we normally call this “honesty”!
Second, what is the significance of WHERE and WHEN Walt makes positive PC comments? Proving he does NOT seem to be biased and is only stating the facts, he makes several positive statements and says that the Gateway One outperforms the Mac in a few areas. Additionally, placing the comments at the end of the article, rather than in the MIDDLE of the article actually makes them more likely to be remembered, based on psych experiments replicated many times. And finally, if the point of the article is that Mac is the clear winner in any iMac v PC One comparison, why would Walt begin by talking about the loser in the comparison??? Wouldn’t he want to focus on the winner? Wouldn’t this be doing the best service to his readers????
Next, your comment that you “almost stopped reading” is particularly stupid and telling. AGAIN, the guy is writing an article comparing Mac v PC computers. And, although he may use the word Mac more than any PC word, this certainly doesn’t mean anything and is certainly no reason to “stop reading”. Indeed, do you want to be honestly informed or do you just want to receive validation for your stupid decision to be a PC user??? Also, I have not counted; but, being a comparison piece, I would NOT be surprised to discover that Gateway (or PC, in general) is mentioned as much as the Mac.
Finally, your comment about how “ridiculous” the article was, in that it proceeded to “bash the Gateway with repeated comparisons to the Mac.”
I have two comments to this:
1. AGAIN, the article was about comparing the two platforms. Why, then, would you have expected anything else??? In fact, what exactly did you expect, if you did not expect the article to be exactly what it was and claimed to be???
2. How is doing a true and honest comparison of two computers in any way “bashing” one of the computers??? I mean: You would only have a point, if the two computers are IDENTICAL in every important way. Then, saying that one is better than the other would certainly be nothing more than “bashing”. However, where and when one of the models is clearly *better* than the other, it is NOT bashing the lesser model to honestly admit it is a “lesser model”.
Talk about “bias”, Mr. Galvan!!! You need to look in the mirror, since you are clearly biased AGAINST Macs. It sounds like you only want to hear positive things about the PC and nothing else. If that’s the case, stay off the internet, since it just might contaminate you with TRUE INFORMATION. And clearly you don’t like that!
Posted by Charles Lakes at November 5th, 2007 at 9:24 amMr. Lakes, it seems that even after all the time you took to write your response you still completely failed to see my point. The article starts by saying “If you’ve lusted after Apple’s sleek, one-piece iMac desktop computers but have no interest in switching to the Mac, you’re in luck this holiday season”. Apparently you don’t understand that an introduction usually gives the reader insight to the content of an article. From that introduction I could conclude that I may get a good rundown of whether or not this is a well-designed Windows PC (especially in comparison to other windows PCs). In this context, how is repeated references to a Mac (which I do also own by the way) going to help my decision? Thanks for missing my point completely and filling the page with your useless drivel.
Posted by Adan Galvan at November 8th, 2007 at 3:15 pmApparently you don’t understand that an introduction usually gives the reader insight to the content of an article.
Apparently you don’t understand that the headline usually gives the reader insight to the content of an article?
What do you NOT understand about, “New Gateway Desktop Takes on Look of iMac, but Can’t Match It“?
That seems pretty concise to me.
Posted by Ronda Wilson at December 28th, 2007 at 8:41 pm