Love at First Sight: The Gateway One

I'm usually not swayed by a pretty face, but the Gateway All-in-One PC is one of the handsomest machines I've ever seen. It's been sitting in my dining room while I check it out, and it's become a major conversation piece for anyone who enters.

In the past, Gateway hasn't exactly been synonymous with groundbreaking design, but that's been changing. (See my review of the new Gateway XHD3000 monitor.) The new Gateway One is a streamlined, sleek PC housed in a glossy black console that's only about 3.5 inches thick. The console houses most of your computer: A 19-inch widescreen LCD, the hard drive, invisible but rich-sounding speakers, a DVD drive, and even a TV tuner (optional) are all built right into the display.

The only loose parts are the keyboard, mouse, and remote—they are wireless, beautifully engineered, and quite responsive. The major benefit, besides getting oohs and ahhs from your friends, is how neat things get when you're not squirreling a chassis and wires below your desk.

The first thing you'll notice is how quick a setup can be. The shoebox-sized power brick has one single cord that attaches to your PC. That's it. One wire and you're off and running.

The other thing you'll notice immediately is how quiet the fan is. Then rev up some music. The sound emanates from within, but you see no speakers. Vibrating transducers are hidden behind the glossy back, producing 8-channel sound that's probably one of the weakest links in the performance, but still more than respectable.

On the inside, the Gateway One features a Core2 Duo processor and an on-board graphics processor (Intel) with an upgrade to the ATI graphics card for even better performance. A 500GB hard drive is upgradeable to 2TB, so it's unlikely you'll run out of storage any time soon. There'se 3GB of RAM memory, as well as connectivity available through Ethernet, 802.11n wireless, and Bluetooth 2. This PC also comes equipped with seven USB ports and a fast slot-loading DVD. It runs Windows Vista Home with a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007. The price, fully loaded, will run you about $1,800.

Apple, Sony, and HP all make all-in-one machines, but Gateway is far from a me-too with this design.

Ben Patterson took an early look at the Gateway One. I've been running it for about three weeks and the love keeps growing.