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The One has arrived. No, I'm not talking about Keanu Reeves and the Matrix, but Gateway's new One GZ7220, whose display and PC components are integrated into a single, slim unit. Think of an iMac in glossy black with a slightly smaller, 19-inch, 1440-by-900 screen, and you're on the right track.
The One offers several neat design flourishes that rival those of the iMac. The black mouse (which has the rounded glossy feel of an Apple mouse) and keyboard are wireless. Several ports--four USB, one gigabit ethernet, and one S/PDIF audio--are located on the external power supply, so under most circumstances you have just one cable running to the main unit. On the main unit are a slot-loading DVD burner on the right side and three USB ports and a memory reader along the left side.
Even external speakers have been eliminated. The One has built-in NXT SoundVu planar technology, which vibrates the front panel itself to produce decent sound. Our $1799 (as of 1/29/08) test unit also includes a top-mounted Webcam, as well as an external USB TV/FM tuner so it can pull double duty as a TV, though it doesn't accept ATSC (digital) or QAM (cable HD) signals. An HD tuner would have been nice.
Performance is nothing to write home about, but fine for workday chores. With a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7250 CPU, 3GB of DDR2 memory, and a 500GB hard drive, our fully loaded One earned a solid but modest score of 87 on WorldBench 6 Beta 2 benchmarking tests. The gaming scores that the system's 256MB ATI 2600HD graphics card produced were adequate only at lower resolutions, but the One isn't meant for gamers anyway.
Like the iMac, the One is priced between a value PC, which it significantly outperforms, and a power PC, which it certainly doesn't. But you're paying for style, and the One has a lot of it.
--Jon L. Jacobi
