Gateway has released two additional Media Center PCs in
the hope that consumer excitement over multimedia will boost what
is forecast as a weak Christmas season for consumer
PCs.
The company released the $799 (£430) Gateway 3250X Media Center
PC and the $1,399 Gateway 7200S Media Center PC through its
website. Both systems feature Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
operating system, which some analysts believe will be the one of
the few catalysts for consumer PC buying in 2005.
Market research companies IDC and Gartner have both predicted a
slowdown in consumer PC spending for the fourth quarter and 2005.
Most consumers have already upgraded their PCs in the past couple
of years, in many cases replacing aging desktops with
notebooks.
Multimedia features are among the few attractions that might
motivate users to upgrade their existing systems, at least until
Microsoft releases Longhorn, the long-awaited successor to the
Windows XP operating system, in 2006, said Stephen Baker, director
at industry analyst NPD Techworld.
Media Center PCs allow users to record live television, burn
DVDs, and organise their digital media files. PC companies hope
that users will want to replace the separate consumer electronics
devices that currently handle those tasks with a PC that can do
them all.
The new operating system also allows users to wirelessly share
files between digital televisions, provided they purchase an
additional piece of equipment.
Gateway's new Media Center PCs complement a retail Media Center
PC it released in conjunction with Microsoft's Windows XP Media
Center Edition 2005 launch in October. Gateway does not sell any
Media Center PCs under its eMachines brand, Gateway said.
The 7200S machine is based on the balanced technology extended
(BTX) design, which Gateway has embraced for several high-end
desktop PCs.
Gateway's BTX PCs utilise changes in the placement of internal
components on the motherboard to take advantage of the stream of
air directed through the chassis by two cooling fans.
These fans are required not only to cool Intel's new Pentium 4
processors but to reduce the amount of noise given off by the PC.
Older cooling strategies require several noisy fans that would
irritate users trying to watch a DVD in their living rooms, Gateway
said.
The 7200S comes with Intel's Pentium 4 540 processor at 3.2GHZ,
512Mbytes of double data rate (DDR) synchronous dynamic RAM
(SDRAM), a 250Gbyte hard drive, a DVD+/-RW drive, a Radeon X300SE
PCI Express graphics card from ATI Technologies with 128Mbytes of
memory, a TV tuner, and a 17-in LCD monitor for $1,399.
The 3250X is designed as an entry-level Media Center PC. It
comes without a TV tuner in its base configuration, but customers
will be able to add that feature for an additional $100 from
24 November.
The PC will come with a Pentium 4 515 (2.93GHz) processor,
512Mbytes of DDR SDRAM, a 160Gbyte hard drive, a CD-RW drive, and a
15-in LCD monitor for $799.
Both PCs can be configured with several different options for
the processor, memory, hard drive, and optical drive.
The Pentium 4 515 processor was built specifically for Gateway,
said Intel. It is based on Intel's 90-nanometer Prescott processor
core, but Intel disabled the hyperthreading feature and limited the
front-side bus speed to 533MHz.
Hyperthreading is a technique that lets the operating system
take advantage of unused execution units on a processor, while the
front-side bus connects the processor with the memory.
Tom Krazit writes for IDG News
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