Gateway FX6800-01e Review

The User Reviews

Average User Rating: 7.0

1. Frequent Crashing

   

   By: Bryce
   May 14, 2009 @ 4:18 PM

   Fast machine yes, but the constant crashing (dump report says Blue Screen) is making this system not usable and I’ll likely have to return it. When performing a Windows Vista update it crashes. I got it at a good price of $999 at Fry’s. I’m assuming RAM, CPU or other hardware is not playing nice with Vista.

   Rating: 2 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

2. damaged hard drive issue

   

   By: Billy
   April 24, 2009 @ 1:53 PM

   It was a really impressive system, but has a terrible problem. Gateway installed a Hard Disk that has a firmware problem. In my case it was too late to be solved, no one in Gateway new about it, despite the fact that Seagate (hard disk company) knew about this issue. I found out this on the internet after searching my hard disk serial number. What a surprise, my hard disk was one of the many damaged drives of this series. In conclusion, I must say, that gateway support was lame. No one knew how to solve this problem. So I hope I will receive a new hard disk, but I must wait until gateway decides to make it real.

   Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

3. It crashes

   

   By: Clara Ritzberg
   March 9, 2009 @ 4:36 PM

   I was surprised when my 1 day old desktop crashed. It freezes on me and my family a lot. When I am playing a game it doesn’t, but when I’m on the internet it does. I really hate that. I do love the design of the desktop and that it is pretty fast. But it compensates by freezing a lot.

   Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

4. Great price for the piece

   

   By: John
   February 16, 2009 @ 8:59 AM

   I was going to try to build my machine from parts, but I didn’t get too far before I realized this was a better value, especially since the plan was to buy reasonable components now and upgrade later.

   It’s a little heavy with pre-installed software and mine didn’t seem to come with a wireless adapter, but other than that, it’s solid. Besides, wireless adapters are cheap and it gives me a good excuse to open that badboy up.

   I got mine for about $1250, a pretty nice rate given the going price of the chip alone is about $300.

   Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

5. Nice Product

   

   By: Mike
   January 1, 2009 @ 10:02 AM

   Overall I have had very good success with Gateway PC’s. This being my 3rd. I have also built computers and feel I am fairly technical when it comes to them.

   With that said, there is very little not to like about this PC. It flies. Cores run cool and are quite zippy out of the box.

   I’ve had the PC for a little under a month now and am quite satisfied. Gateway put together a very capable PC for the cost. True hardcore gamers will want to upgrade the power supply and video card accordingly. The games I have played ran just fine as is.

   The review spoke of crashes, mine has yet to crash. Just be aware that Windows Vista 64 bit will NOT run all software that says Vista Compatable. It needs to be compatable with the 64 bit version. Also keep in mind the memory limitations of the 32 bit OS and you can see that the 64 bit is still the way to go. Obviously this is a Operating system issue and has nothing to do with your PC. Time should heal these wounds as the 64 bit OS is just starting to flood the market and the hardware and software vendors are quickly catching up.

   Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

6. So far so good

   

   By: Steve
   December 5, 2008 @ 8:30 AM

   I just bought an FX6800-01 four days ago, and so far so good.

   I guess I’m one of the more sophisticated users referred to in the review, because my first task was to partition the HD and do a clean installation of Vista Ultimate with SP1. This eliminated all of the bloatware referred to in the review. I did have to download and install the PC’s drivers from the Gateway web site before everything was happy again after the new OS was installed.

   I’m still in the process of installing all my applications and configuring the user accounts for everyone in my family, but so far the PC is performing flawlessly. It’s very fast.

   For purposes of back-up, I just purchased and installed a 1 TB SATA-II drive in one of the front bays. I really liked being able to slide the drive in without taking the case apart. Initially, this kept the PC from booting, and required me to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from the original 750 GB drive instead of the new drive. After that, all was good again.

   I ordered but haven’t received 3 more GB of DDR3 RAM, which will bring the system up to 6 GB. So I will be opening the case this weekend, and I expect that installation to work out fine and will only make the PC even faster.

   The hinged doors that you use to tilt out the flash drive reader slots and USB/Firewire/audio/mic ports are stiff but work well enough. You do have to push firmly and steadily on these doors until you hear a click in order to open/close them, but once you know to listen for the click, they’re fine.

   I was wondering if I was going to have any problems installing my 32-bit applications, but this hasn’t been an issue at all so far.

   Like I said at the beginning, so far so good. It certainly is a lot of PC power for the cash.

   Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No