The Gateway Profile is for anyone with normal computing needs, a limited amount of space, and an appreciation for good looks. Instead of being contained in a big beige box, all of the Profile electronics are built around a thin flat panel LCD monitor with a sleek silver bezel. As you know, I am always swayed by good looks. I think the Profile’s svelte “profile” and the black-and-silver color scheme makes it an appealing device that will look right at home in any office or any room in the house. The space-saving features of the Profile are also attractive. Clear off an 8” x 13” area of your desktop or table, plug in the power, mouse and keyboard and you are ready to start computing.
I reviewed the most expensive Profile. The 4XL comes with a 17-inch flat panel display, 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (with 533MHz bus), 512MB of SDRAM, a 120GB hard disk, and DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, a 56K modem, and an integrated Ethernet adapter. The CD/DVD drive, the floppy drive, and a pair of speakers are mounted just under the front bezel of the monitor. Headphone jacks and audio inputs are conveniently placed on both front and back of the system. The Profile 4 also includes plenty of ports for extra devices. It has two FireWire ports, one parallel, two serial, two PS/2 ports, six USB ports, and a Type II PC Card slot.
This Profile’s display is crisp and bright with a fairly wide viewing angle. And of course, I prefer these LCD screens which are thinner and easier on the eyes. The sound system has no sub woofer, but sounds better than most average computer sound systems. The included Logitech USB optical mouse and the Gateway Millennium Keyboard are both full-featured and comfortable to use.
Gateway preinstalls Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft Works Suite with Word 2002, and starter versions of Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, InterVideo WinDVD, and Symantec Norton AntiVirus. My Profile also included a copy of The Sims, a great little game which allows you to build and run a neighborhood.
The Profile 4XL is the highest priced Profile model. The 4X is the same computer with a 60 GB hard drive and 256MB SDRAM for $500 less. Since the memory can be easily upgraded later, if you don’t need the extra hard drive space, the 4X model may be the best buy. Two other Profile models, the 4S and 4S Plus are available for $999 and $1209, but the Celeron processors in these models are sure to take away some of the snappy performance that I enjoyed with the XL model.
What’s not to like? While the included 32MB Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 graphics controller is quite adequate, it is not upgradeable. While more than sufficient for average tasks like Web browsing, word processing, photo editing, or playing a quick game of Quake, avid gamers and heavy-duty designers will find this a drawback.
All-in-all, the Profile 4 is a capable computer which offers great design and space-saving convenience.
