512mb mp3 player

Gateway Adds MP3 Player, Consumer Gear

As expected, Gateway Inc. topped off its consumer line on Tuesday, introducing a total of fourteen new products at a press conference held in New York City. Products included a new music player, a digital video recorder, and several new PCs.

Gateway has been stretched by conflicting forces: on one hand, the top companies in the market, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, cater a significant portion of their company's offerings to business. On the other, Gateway has tried to expand into being more than just a PC OEM, and has led rivals, like Dell, into the electronics retail space.

"We're mostly known for our consumer business," said Ted Waitt, Gateway's chairman and chief executive. "What a lot of people have lost sight of is the breadth and depth of the consumer products we have."

Gateway's product introductions included:

The DMP-X20 Digital Jukebox, a 20-Gbyte hard disk drive based MP3 player that includes an FM tuner. The DMP-X20 can store data files as well as other data, and transfer it via a USB 2.0 interface. The $299.99 jukebox will be available on Nov. 26.

Two digital cameras, the DC-M42 and the DC-T23. The four-megapixel Gateway DC-M42 costs $249.99 and includes 11 Mbyte of internal memory, and the new two-megapixel model, the Gateway DC-T23 is priced at $129.99. "You will see us... continue to push the envelope," Waitt said of future digital camera introductions.

Three new notebooks, including the Gateway M275XL, the company's first convertible notebook. The Gateway M275XL, priced at $2,099.99, builds on the existing M275X configuration with upgraded features including a 1.6-GHz Intel Pentium-M processor, 512MB of DDR SDRAM memory and a 60 GB hard disk drive.

The Gateway DVD recorder, priced at $349. The recorder uses the DVD+RW format, according to Matt Milne, senior vice-president of digital solutions at Gateway.

Two Gateway 23- and 26-inch LCD TVs. Each is priced at $1,499 and $2,299, respectively.

A pair of routers. Gateway chose a slightly different direction here, Waitt said, by introducing a $49.99 powerline networking adapter, as well as a more conventional $59.99 802.11g wireless router.

The Gateway 901 Family Room Media Center, a rack-mounted Media Center PC that hearkens back to Gateway's old Destination PC/TV. "It's really all coming together right now," Waitt said.

Gateway will sell its new products both separately as well as in bundles designed to appeal to certain customer segements. For example, a "I Love Photography" bundle will combine the 310S PC, Gateway DC-T20 2-megapixel digital camera, Epson Styus C84 printer, Digital Photo Creator Kit and 100 sheets of photo paper for $899.99 after a $70 rebate -- $234 less than if the products were purchased separately, Gateway said.

Gateway also previewed two products that the company will launch at Comdex, a Serial ATA JBOD device that provides storage up to 2 terabytes, as well as a Serial Attached Storage product.