Gateway Offers New Small Form Factor PC

Gateway, the third largest PC vendor in the United States, according to Gartner, is launching a new small form factor desktop that includes Intel's Core 2 Duo processors.

The Irvine, Calif., company introduced the new line of desktops, the E-2160 family, on March 29 and the company plans on marketing the PC to a steadfast group of vertical customers such as education institutions, government entities and small and midsize businesses.

While Gateway is advertising the 2610N desktop as a small form factor PC with three bays, the company said its BTX chassis will allow customers to configure the machines as a six-bay minitower, the 2610D, or as a three-bay desktop, the 2610S.

While the revenue OEMs used to collect from desktops sales have slipped as notebooks and other mobile devices have become much more profitable, some IT vendors believe that there still is a place for this type of PC.

In the last month, Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC vendor, has rolled out a number of high-end desktops for enterprises with a focus on energy efficiency.

Then, on March 28, HP also unveiled a refreshed version of its Compaq dx2300 desktop that is specifically designed for SMBs.

Much like HP, Gateway has been looking to attract customers to its products by offering the latest in Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors, as well as touting the addition of Microsoft Windows Vista operating system for consumers and SMBs.

In addition to using a range of Intel chips - the Celeron D, Pentium 4, Pentium D and Core 2 Duo - the desktop comes with Intel's 945G chip set, a minimum of 512MB of DDR2 (double data rate memory) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) and a SATA (Serial ATA) II hard drive with up to 500GB of memory. With the tower version, the company offers an additional hard drive bay and a maximum of 1TB of memory.

The PC also includes GatewayShield, the company's Internet, hardware and data protection tool that includes TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2, which provides networking security and encryption features.

The E-2610, which is immediately available, has a starting price of $599, according to Gateway.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International