Columbus gateway computer

What happens when a phone and Web PC vendor opens a brick-and-mortar shop? To find out, we moseyed over to the Gateway Country Store in Columbus Circle, the first Manhattan outpost of the prairie firm's growing chain.

The Country Store looks like a Pottery Barn with notebooks instead of knickknacks. We asked a friendly sales rep named Greg to suggest a home office desktop that could handle light chores such as Word and PowerPoint work; Greg immediately showed us the fastest PC in the place, Gateway's Pentium III-powered Performance 550.

When we reminded him that we wouldn't be using AutoCAD or Quake, he pointed us to only slightly more affordable 500MHz and 450MHz Pentium IIIs. We had to ask to see a Celeron.

Next, eyeing a sleek flat-panel display, we asked which had the sharper image--the LCD or a standard CRT? Greg continued his tilt toward higher-priced options, saying he didn't see a big difference between the two but preferred the LCD.

Despite the plentiful PCs in Gateway Country Stores, they're just for tire-kicking: To buy, you sit with a sales rep and choose your configuration; an order is then sent to the Sioux Falls, S.D., factory for home delivery. The only things we could walk out with that day were cow-spotted denim shirts and golf balls, and bovine Beanie Babies. All in all, not a moo-ving experience.