Gateway DX4831-01e

Pros: Was going to build a PC for around $1100-1300 and found this nice peace of work for under $500 after tax and did everything I needed it to do, so worth the money. HDMI hook up to my 32in HDTV is awesome. Tons of RAM,CPU power,audio,and exp. bays.

Cons: Can't complain for the quality/feature ratio. The integrated GPU isn't hard core but it handled HDMI stream to my 32in HDTV. Keyboard looked cheap but actually turned out to be decent w/lots of WIN7 hot keys. No, I can't complain about this computer.

Summary: I am extremely happy with this purchase. Got for under $500 after tax. Was pretty much set on building a new computer for around $1100-1300 and just happened to find this computer that just had to much in it to for the great price. I thought about the PC I was going to build vs this computer and after several months of pre-planed analysis; I ditched the build and bought this bad boy. The only thing that was standing out to me was the integrated GPU. I knew I would be putting something in it to replace that, even though it worked just fine for almost everything I through at it. I did end up buying a NVIDIA GT240 1G as it had the best cost/processing power/low wattage use I could find. Didn't have to change power supply either because of the GPUs low wattage. Cost about $80, but for that you get a PC that can handle whatever. After adding the GPU with the recent driver, the Windows 7 experience index was: Processor 6.9 - RAM 7.0 - Graphics 6.7 - Gaming Graphics 6.7 - and the lower point Primary Hard Disk at 5.9. Those aren't to bad of numbers considering the amount of features with the quality of Gateway/Acer name. Wouldn't dare touch an HP for nothing. I don't invest in planned obsolescence products from greedy Corporations. I have had this PC for almost a year and it's fantastic. The last computer I bought was back in 2002. That right. Had the good ole XP with 80GB of memory and with little hardware updates after about 5-6 years, but it never failed. So when I buy something I intend on getting years out of it and I know this PC will do the same. I may end up building the PC I was planning on building before and give this one to my Parents so they will have a nice PC and I will have a little more juice since I can pick and part each and every component, but that will be way down the road. Maybe when USB 3.0 and SATA 3 are more present, along with SSD's that come down in price. The i3 processor is really fast also. It acts as a quad core but is actually only 2 cores (hyper thread technology). If you wanted to replace the processor, it would be easy to do as it's chip set is upgradeable, but I don't see anyone needing to unless you are needing all of that processing power for applications that demand it.