Gateway

In the USA Gateway computers sells direct to homeowners mainly, this is to inform those people who are looking for a replacement or addidtional system not to purchase anything from this company. I see that there are resellers in the UK that have refurbished for sale from time to time. This company was a leader in customer service in the mid to late 90's now that has gone the way of the doodoo. Gateway purchased or better to say are now under the Emachines product line. EMachines are a very inexpensive computer system with an ok rep selling in the $350.00 US range or about 675.00 pounds. Not bad for a 2.8 Celeron D 512 ram 80 gig unit with on board sound/video.

Why a bad system number one I deal in the custom build/systems end of business in the US; I have had in recent months dealt with 3 Gateway systems 2 about 3 to 4 years old, not state of the art now but systems that both parties use for email, web and Microsoft Office and the last system was less than 9 months old with a bad video card, which took 8 weeks to get replaced under the Gateway warranty plan. They did send a monitor, and motherboard both of which I have yet to get a return authorization from them to send back. All this for a video card that just died for no reason I can find.

My recent item as of today was a bad NLX riser card for 4 year old system from a lady on a fixed or limited income that I gave a flat fee of $25.00 to repair, about 1/2 the price of other computer repair places and at $25 for the whole job. The problem was simple bad PCI slots on the riser, need to find out from Gateway if they had the part and price. 2 days of emails and dropped phone calls from them and I find out they don't carry the part ( rep stated they don't carry most parts 3 years) and I have a website that will charge $69.oo US for just the riser! Needless to say the lady who wanted to work directly through the Gateway can't afford a $69.00 part form an outside supplier with a 90 day warranty only. I have set her up with a very cheap case and ok 300 watt power supply, with motherboard and DDR 128MB ram for $ 60.00 if she wants to go that way and I have offered her 60 days use of PIII 500 loaner to use.

Yes I'll be out about $150.00 with labor and time spent on resolving this issue but at least she'll have a Christmas miracle this year and I will most likely have more people come to me for work and service. Sometimes it's more than money that makes one profitable.

For more information see the resellerratings.com for more info on Gateway products. Also this is a very good site to check into other computer resellers, mostly US based but several ship internationally. Again buyer beware of anything related to Gateway computers.