Gateway GT5408 Review

As a former interactive media director for a large media conglomerate, I'm used to fast laptops and good high-speed connections.  When I read the reviews for the Gateway GT5408, I thought this would be a good desktop for my home office.  I'm now wishing I'd made another choice.

Perhaps it's Vista (Microsoft's releases, as we know, are always hopelessly buggy), or maybe it's the computer itself, but IE locks up on us at least twice a day causing a reboot of the program.  Shutting the computer down takes a full three minutes (?!!!?) -- really.  The DVD R/W drive is finicky; a CD-R that had been working properly only minutes before suddenly "blew up" last night -- no scratches or other visible defects, but the drive would no longer read it.

On the plus side, we've been running it pretty hard over the past five months, and it hasn't blown up completely.  Or, maybe that would be a good thing so we could get a new one.

No, don't waste your money.  I gave Gateway the benefit of the doubt, but certainly won't make the same mistake twice.