The Gateway LX6200-01 HTPC on a budget Review

The Gateway LX6200-01 HTPC on a budget

This sub $1000 HTPC comes in a sleek and unobtrusive version of the Gateway FX6800-01e case housing (minus some of the flashier points). This proved to be a great option for this budget machine, as the 750 GB hard drive that comes standard with this machine might not be enough for the media geek who saves every video they edit or come across to their storage system. The AMD Phenom Quad Core CPU is multimedia friendly, but is not a gaming screamer. Performance for this CPU is adequate, though not spectacular, and might perform sub-par if not sticking to media editing and venture off into gaming. More memory might be the first though, but with 8GB already under the hood, and nor room for DIMM addition, this thought is fleeting at best.

Not all is bad on the LX6200-01 front however. With an ATSC/HDTV TV tuner card, and an open PCIe slot ( there is also an additional PCI opening), users who find the graphics performance sub par can simply upgrade their GPU capability.There is also room for a total of 4 hard drives, 3 more in addition to the 750 GB internal drive already present.

Gateway has one drawback that consistently raise eyebrows of any computer reviewer, and that is the amount of unwanted and unneeded software that comes pre-installed on their HTPC and other PC products. Both Yahoo and Google have their tool bars installed, and the abundance of games you may never play and the office suite from Microsoft (60 days), the 360 security suite from Norton (60 days), even the Napster trial (30 days), could have all just as easily be downloaded online for free (if you really wanted them). These in addition to the usual Gateway crapware suspects (NetZero Ads, etc) make cleaning your desktop before use or after trials' end to be almost unbearable.

All in all, the LX6200-01 HTPC is a budget box with loads of unwanted additions, and missing a few that would make this HTPC more of a joy to fire up. If you are looking to save some money, then the purchase of this PC will achieve that, but if you are looking for bang for your buck, this Gateway leads elsewhere.

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