ORIGINAL REVIEW 11/21/2012----Our Criteria for Selection----
We were looking to retire our 5 year old laptop that was hooked up to our main tv (lcd, 1080p). We wanted a laptop/desktop/tablet media solution that would be cost-effective but at the same time meet our needs (HDMI-capable, fast(er) cpu with enough memory to not hiccup the OS in general, wireless-N for smooth streaming, sub-$500, be able to handle any new requirements we hadn't thought of). We currently have 3 PC's at home and we really didn't want to spend a paycheck on a 4th so being cost-effective was a very big need.
We ruled out tablets right away since tablet technology was evolving so fast that we weren't sure if we'd still be using it 5 years down the road (let alone 9 months with a new release!). Laptops got a fair look and had a Dell laptop picked out until we saw this PC. We ended picking this PC because it had everything were looking for and then some. It was the ONLY one with a decently good chip (i3) in this price range (all other i3 chip machines were at least $100 more), wireless-N, HDMI, 1 TB SATA HDD, 6 Gb RAM, etc.
----Setup----
I hooked up the PC to our TV using HDMI. The quick setup guide sheet that came with the product showed that I should be able to. I turned the PC on and what happens? No video... So I grabbed one of our lcd monitors and that's when I find out, there's no DVI ports! A bit stunned since I've been used to seeing it on PC's for years now, I chalked it up to that's where we're headed I guess. As I'm thinking this, I notice a RGB port so I walk to my trove of wires and dig out a RGB male/male cable and hooked the monitor to the PC and viola.
The windows setup itself was about 6-8 questions long and painless (sorry I wasn't counting the exact number but it wasn't that many.) For those of you thinking to use this for wireless right off the bat, it recognized our network right away and we were able to choose it from the list, of course you'd need to supply the password. After the questions, it asked me to wait while it was configuring for first use and that took about 5 full minutes, no biggie.
Once the setup was completed, I unplugged my monitor, hooked up the HDMI cable from the PC to the TV again and this time there was video. So for those at home, no HDMI during first setup but you can use it afterwards. I'm sure there's a bios selection somewhere but this isn't work... and I didn't want to figure anything out and wanted to get this up in the least time possible!
----Usage----
ugh.. windows 8. I'm a life-long windows man, been in the industry for years and Bill's been feeding my family for a very long time but this new iteration of windows is going to get some used to. I don't have an opinion on Windows 8 yet since I haven't given it a fair shake but after fumbling around enough to open IE and stream some cartoons for my kids, I haven't gone back to give it a real shake down... We'll get to it eventually. eventually... Oh, the important part I need to add is, the picture is awesome using HDMI, youtube looks great as well as other streaming sites. I was a bit leery of the onboard video and shared memory but I haven't seen any problems.
----Overall thoughts----
It's only been a day but overall, I am very satisfied with our new media machine. Windows 8 is getting some used to but this isn't a review on Windows 8. Not having great experiences with Gateway in the past, we were kind of hesitant but for $379 what harm could it be we thought. But the machine is very responsive, streaming has been wonderful and we were able to get rid of our dvd player since we can use this machine instead. I figure we won't be putting office or any productivity-related products on here so I can't say if it'll chug through memory intensive programs. But for a media machine, we have definitely been surprised and would recommend.
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UPDATE 11/25/2012
MISC INFO
It's been a few days since we've had the machine up and we still have no qualms about it and are enjoying it very much. A few additional things of note that was left off, in no particular order:
-There's no restore disk but from what I've read, that's the current trend (?) although this is a first for me. I have yet to look for info on any on-disk recovery options as I haven't needed it but thought I'd throw it out there.
-The machine itself is very quiet and we can hardly hear the fan while its on.
-The keyboard and mouse are wired-usb
-Bloatware is very minimal as I could see some people using all the programs that come with the initial install. We personally uninstalled about 4 programs but it was personal preference. I remember getting rid of 10+ programs when we got our retired laptop so 4 was surprising for us.
-No remote desktop since this is not the pro version of Windows 8.
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UPDATE 4/11/2013
ON-BOARD RECOVERY TESTED
So it's been a few months and the PC has been great for the most part. Being a multimedia machine, I take care of it quite less (if at all any) than any other PC in the house so it got to the point where Windows was doing some weird things and eventually stopped booting. This probably had to do mostly with our 20 month old playing with the mouse, keyboard and/or on and off switch to his liking when people weren't looking so I can't blindly blame Window 8 for it. So it finally came down to figuring out if there was a on-board restore of some sort.
And there was! On a clean boot, I blindly started pressing ESC, F1, F2, F3, F8, F9, F12, DELETE sequentially and on the second try I was able to access a menu of some sort. Again, this wasn't work so I wasn't aiming to figure out the exacts... Anyway, there were four choices that I could choose from and the I chose the selection best described as "fix windows". Unfortunately, after a couple of minutes, the screen showed that it was unable to fix my computer. The next one I chose was "Refresh Windows" which would return the PC back to it's original factory state when we first got it, meaning any programs we installed would be deleted, BUT our settings in IE, etc would be saved. This took about a good full 10 minutes to finish. Once up, indeed, everything was back to factory settings with personal settings. The remaining two options were Exit and something else I can't seem to remember as of this writing.
All in all, I would prefer a hard copy of my Windows but I think this has to do with the oem licensing so not much I can do about it. Back to enjoying our movie!
Buy Gateway DX4860-UR308 Desktop (Black) Now
It's a really great computer! --Just too bad it came preloaded with Windows 8. (If you're use to customizing your computer to operate and do things your way, you're going to hate Windows 8! Everything has changed, even the vocabulary, so if you try to search for something specific, it's near impossible to find what your looking for. It's even more difficult to override or change how Windows 8 operates as some of the algorithms to make changes are written specifically for Window 7, and have not been updated and no longer apply to Window 8!)I would have given Gateway's computer five stars, but with how BAD Windows 8 is, I have to take one star away.
Read Best Reviews of Gateway DX4860-UR308 Desktop (Black) Here
Have always had good results with Gateway products and this desktop is NOT an exception. My only negative was Windows 8 it is supposed to be an intuitive system but it has taken me a long time to somehow get used to its' simplicity. Can live with this but still prefer earlier operating systems.Want Gateway DX4860-UR308 Desktop (Black) Discount?
I got tired of building units and decided to buy one built. The price was right and the components good enough for my needs. Just use it for email and search for electronics and tools on sale (retired now). So far its working fine. Hope it continues that way.Save 15% Off
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