Gateway 610 Media Center

[Ioman]

I just got this unit for review last week and I can honestly say that I am super impressed with it so far. Unfortunately the weak point of the system is the limited functions and capabilities of the Windows Media Center operating system.

The 610 has an integrated DVD Writer, FM radio tuner, speakers, sbwoofer, 16:9 widescreen display. The remote is very slim and stylish and the wireless keyboard and mouse are made by Micrsoft and work great. The system even has 802.11g instead of 802.11b which is a huge bonus.

What erks me is the OS. It will not let you search for music or movie files on other systems in your network so the files have to be on the system which this OS is installed. Secondly, you cannot just listen to internet music, it comes with a stupid Napster program installed and you have to pay a subscription if you want to listen to music. You cannot just plug in the IP address of your favorite station.

The OS is also not compatible with satellite from what I can tell so you need to have cable to take control of the DVR functions.

Overall its a great start for Gateway and its just sad that the Media Center OS is so limiting.

[reyloc]

Can someone help us with a backup disk? we purchased a new gateway 510 media center computer from the home shoping network in march. we did not open the computer until our computer room was ready,which was three months later. when we setup the computer we downloaded a virus, because we have nothing on the computer we decided to reinstall the operating system and when we went to get the backup disks,there was none, only the windows backup disk. Apparently we did not recieve two other disks,a red and a blue disk. After many tries to gatway support the tell us we have to purchase new disks. Can anyone help with our delima Thank you