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The Gateway DX4200-09 provides masses of room for enlargement, and a giant drive. However, the competition offers quicker performance and more features. While the Gateway might appeal to users who price storage over speed, you’ll be able to find more features in computers that cost just a bit less, and more performance for a little more. That leaves this Gateway with little to advocate it.

The DX4200-09 is another one of Gateway’s mid range Computers built for light to moderate users in mind. Spending $500 on this model gives you a 1.8GHz quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, an integrated graphics chip, and a 640GB drive. If you can put an extra $50 forward, HP offers the Pavilion a6700y desktop that matches parts but outperforms the Gateway usually.

If you care less about performance and desire more features in your desktop, Acer’s $470 Aspire X1700 outclasses this Gateway on that front. We’d only recommend this system to the few of you who might price hard-drive size above everything else.

The front faceplate looks precisely the same, with a media boss, dual-layer DVD burner, and an open bay below to add an additional drive. There is a FireWire port as well as two personal audio jacks at the bottom. The rear gives you more of the same ports that you get up front, like some additional USB inputs, another FireWire port, a collection of audio jacks, and an HDMI port to attach the PC to an HDMI-equipped monitor or TV.

Though it is simple to glaze over the included parts, Gateway does give you sufficient room to make internal upgrades. There’s room for two additional memory chips, a PCI slot ( as well as another occupied by the 56k modem ), a smaller 1x PCI Express slot, and a 16x PCI Express slot for a graphics card. You may drop 2 more hard drives into the exposed bay, as well as adding another forward-facing optical drive.