Gateway Inc. is trying to help space-constrained businesses gain more room on crowded desktops.
The Poway, Calif., company earlier this month unveiled two small-form- factor PCs designed to occupy less space than traditional microtowers but keep the computing power and manageability enterprises need.
The Gateway E-2000 and E-4000 PCs are 35 percent smaller than microtower equivalents but offer four bays, rather than three, and contain industry-standard computing components. Competitive products tend to incorporate the more expensive and smaller components traditionally used in notebooks, said Bill Lange, product manager for Gateways E-Series.
The extra bays enable users to have floppy, Zip, CD-RW and hard drives, Lange said. The chassis also has six Universal Serial Bus 2.0 ports and audio, video and legacy ports.
The chassis can be configured as a desktop or a tower. As a tower, it measures 13.5 inches tall, 4 inches wide, 15.5 inches deep and weighs less than 21 pounds.
“Were focusing on clients looking for a small box that doesnt take up a lot of desktop real estate,” Lange said. “But this also has standard PC components.” This not only gives users the computing power theyre looking for but also enables them to use industry-standard components to maintain and up- grade the computers, Lange said.
The Florida State Attorneys Office for Dade County, in Miami, is considering buying the smaller Gateway PCs. “Weve always tried to purchase the smallest thing we can that still has the functions we need,” said Hamilton Davies, IS director.
“As small as you can go without having everything integrated is what were looking for.” Davies said his office needs PCs that offer basic functionality, not a lot of bells and whistles.
“I only have a handful of PCs that have cameras, funky cards and whatnot,” Davies said, adding that the office has about 1,200 machines. “For a regular secretarys or attorneys desktop, all I need is a floppy, CD—and thats it.”
The new PCs are available now, starting at $699 for the E-4000 and $549 for the E-2000.
Gateway has been pushing ways to give users full computing capabilities in a small form factor, according to Lange. For example, in August the company launch- ed the all-in-one Gateway Profile 4 series of business and institutional desktops, and this fall it rolled out a 4-inch-thick digital TV and plasma display.