computer systems

Gateway Profile 4 PC

Rating:

By Joel Shore

October 7, 2002

The easy story is that Gateway, losing market share and deep in the red, had to do something drastic to yank the spotlight away from Dell and Apple. Well, they did.

But there’s a much better story: the Profile 4 is a darn good computer that looks super-sleek and feels good to use. Perfect it’s not, but it’s a great choice for your home, home office, or dorm room. And corporations too: This ultra-stylish powerhouse will look great in any executive suite.

The Profile 4 is an “all-in-one.” That means the computer and the display monitor are wedded into a single unit. Over the years, all-in-ones have gotten a bad rap, sometimes with good reason. In many cases, either the computer portion or the display portion became woefully obsolete, leaving owners with no upgrade path and little to show for their investment. Will that be the case here? Only time will tell.

A second strike facing all-in-ones is the out-of-service problem. When the PC portion breaks down, you’ve got a useless monitor. And when the monitor goes belly up, you’ve got a computer that can’t show you what it’s doing.

Rear panel view. The mouse and keyboard plug into the round ports on the left; modem port is just above. Ethernet port is at bottom right with four USB 2.0 ports to its left. Power connection is at top right.

Wisely, Gateway has addressed this latter potential pitfall. The back panel of the Profile 4 features a VGA port. That’s important, because it means you can hook up any external monitor if the Profile 4’s flat-panel display takes a divot from an errant golf-club swing in the CEO’s office. So, you’ll still be in business. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll certainly work. And, of course, just as you can with your laptop PC, you can connect a video projector to the VGA port for displaying things like PowerPoint presentations to a large audience.

Two USB 2.0 ports, two Fire-Wire ports, and a PC Card slot are conveniently located on the Profile 4’s right side.

The final mark against all-in-ones is expandability. There aren’t any empty slots for adding a high-end audio card or a super-duper video accelerator card. And there are no drive bays for a second hard drive or ZIP drive. If that matters to you, look elsewhere, but the fact is the vast majority of PC owners never add to their systems. No one will say it, so we will: Lack of expandability is not the showstopper that some doomsday pundits make it out to be.

Three models, many options. You can get a Profile 4 for as little as $999. As recently as 2000, you’d pay more than that just for a 15-inch flat-panel display! Our system, when we configured it on the Gateway Web site, weighed in at a hefty $2,199. You’ll want to wind up somewhere in between. Let’s examine the three Profile models, the 4SE, 4X, and 4XL.

Remember, these are standard configurations, which you can radically change by visiting the Gateway Web site. All Profile 4 models rely on a pair of small built-in speakers. If you want a subwoofer, you’ll have to purchase a set of add-on external speakers; there’s no way to add just a subwoofer. Furthermore, all Profile 4 models include a 10/100 Ethernet port and a modem. There’s also one PC Card slot.

• Profile 4SE. At $999 this model is outfitted with a 1.7GHz Intel Celeron processor, enough horsepower for all but intense gamers, graphics artists, and engineers. Its 128 Mbytes of SDRAM and 20-Gbyte hard drive just won’t cut it, though. Windows won’t be truly happy unless it has a minimum of 256 Mbytes of memory; 512 Mbytes is even better. And it’s likely you’ll fill up the hard drive in less than a year. The 15-inch LCD monitor is quite a bit smaller than the 17-inch panels on the other models.
  Our advice: If this is the only model you can afford, get it. Cough up $80 to double memory to 256 Mbytes. And spend another $50 to get a 40-Gbyte hard drive. If you want to create (burn) your own CDs, toss in another $80. Ok, you’re now up to $1,209, but you’ve built a very good all-in-one system.

• Profile 4X. This $1,499 mid-range model moves up to a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256 Mbytes of SDRAM memory, a 40-Gbyte hard drive, 17-inch LCD monitor, and a CD-RW drive.
  Our advice: This model is a terrific compromise. You get adequate memory and disk space, and the superb larger 15-inch display. For another $60, we strongly recommend that you step up to the 80-Gbyte hard drive.

• Profile 4XL. Top of the line system includes a standard 2.66GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz available as an option), 512 Mbytes of SDRAM, 120-Gbyte hard drive, CD-RW/DVD combo drive, and 17-inch display.
  Our advice: We really like this system. All-in-ones do not get better than this. However, before you spend $2,000 for a PC, be sure to also consider a standard tower configuration with its myriad internal expansion capabilities. That will allow you to add options like a high-end audio card with MIDI ports, powerful graphics card, a second hard drive, and so on. If expansion isn’t a big deal—and for many it isn’t, you’ll find this model is as powerful as anything else on the market.

Easy set-up. You won’t do anything today that’s much easier than setting up a Profile 4. Plug in the keyboard. Plug in the mouse. Connect the power cord (more about that in a moment) and you’re done! Since the PC and monitor are one, you don’t have a video cable and power cord from the monitor to worry about. And the speakers are built in.

Now about that main power cord. To keep the Profile 4 small, Gateway moved the power supply and associated circuitry out of the computer and into a separate a.c. adapter. It’s just like the power adapter on your laptop computer, except this one is is about the size and weight of a brick. But who cares? Tuck it behind your desk, out of sight where it belongs, and then forget about it.

Expansion yes. In some ways, eight exactly, the Profile 4 is king when it comes to expansion. The unit has two IEEE 1384 (FireWire) ports and an astonishing six USB ports. Even better, these are Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports, that are a whopping 40 times faster than older USB 1.1 ports. With the FireWire ports you can hook up your digital video camcorder and all those other gizmos that haven’t been invented yet. Those 6 USB ports are great for hooking up printers, a business-card scanner, external disk storage, a keychain USB disk drive, a ZIP drive, a scanner, and dozens of other devices sporting a USB interface. You’ll have lots of USB wires snaking up to the otherwise sleek Profile 4, but in the overall scheme of things, that’s really not so bad. We are truly impressed by the number of input/output options.

Expansion no. Yet all is not perfect. The Profile 4’s sleek appearance comes at a price we previously mentioned: like just about every all-in-one computer available today, there’s no place for adding audio or video cards, an additional hard drive, or an internal ZIP drive or tape drive. If that’s a problem for you, then an all-in-one is not the answer to your prayers. Shop for a standard desktop tower instead.

Gateway’s Profile 4 all-in-one PC is elegant enough for the boardroom and tough enough for the boiler room. With its Kensington security socket, you can connect a security cable, making the Profile 4 also a great dorm-room choice that won’t be easily stolen. We just might put one in the kitchen, too.<