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Technology Stocks : Gateway (GTW) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert A. Green, CPA who wrote (7038)	2/15/1999 7:23:00 PM
From: Jet.Screamer	Respond to of 8002

I find your experience and post very confusing. I have a hard time understanding how Gateway hardware can be proprietary when they use the same off the shelf components everyone else uses as well as the same crappy ooperating system-windows jon

To: Robert A. Green, CPA who wrote (7038)	2/15/1999 9:23:00 PM
From: Fred Fahmy	Respond to of 8002

Robert, In the spirit of balance; I have been a Gateway customer (as well as a Dell and Micron customer) for many years. I bought my first Gateway about 10 years ago and my most recent about 7 months ago. I have never had a significant problem with any of my Gateway machines either at home or at work. I have recommended several Gateway's to friends, family, and co-workers. All of them have been very satisfied. In fact, when I recently bought my PII-400, three other friends bought virtually the identical system. None of us have had a single problem. You can find good stories and horror stories from all the PC vendors. The question is, do you really think that Gateway could have gone from a $10,000 company 11 or 12 years ago to a $7+ billion company today if your experience was in any way representative?? Very doubtful. I keep up with this industry on a daily basis, and despite your personal experience, Gateway always rates among the top in satisfaction and reliability in all the major PC publications when consumers are polled. As for Gateway being proprietary....that simply is total hogwash. Gateway is about as standard as they come. Dell consumer models are also very generic. Dell's Optiplex (business computers) on the other hand do have some proprietary features...primarily the motherboard. Micron (MUEI) has some proprietary flavor to their motherboard BIOS. Disclaimer: I have no position in GTW, DELL, or MUEI FF

To: Robert A. Green, CPA who wrote (7038)	2/15/1999 10:55:00 PM
From: Charles W. Breaux, Jr.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8002

I have bought 7 Gateway PCs, starting with a 386-25 years ago, for both home & business. Multiple family members & friends have also bought Gateway PCs. None of us have had major problems with them or their support. I would still heartily recommend them to first-time & subsequent buyers. Good investing! Chuck

To: Robert A. Green, CPA who wrote (7038)	2/24/1999 2:15:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 8002

Robert ...had similar problems...turned out the mouse I was using was not matched to the Comp...I know little of these things...pal of mine figured it out...Good luck...T

To: Robert A. Green, CPA who wrote (7038)	2/24/1999 2:31:00 PM
From: Craig Lieberman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8002

Disclaimer: I am very long in DELL stock and an owner of a DELL 400Mhz PII. Very happy with it... My own experience with Gateway. As a engineer with a company in Northbrook IL, I was asked as a favor to help an investor with his home machine. I worked evenings as a consultant trying to sort out his PC problems. He had bought a Pentium 90 with all the bells and whistles which was the top of the line at the time. I spend hours just trying to get through to Gateway customer service at least 3 times. When we did get through, their answer was usually very vague like you indicated. re-format the hard drive and re-install the software. They swapped mother boards, they swapped video cards, they send new CD rom drives. What they couldn't ever do despite their trying was fix the problems. As you indicated, their proprietary boards were not compatible with each other for anything but what they delivered. We were trying to load OS/2 in addition to Windows and could never get it all working. After 10 months of back and forth, and good faith efforts on both sides, my client decided to return the machine. Despite the fact that the problem report started within one month of getting the machine, Gateway claimed that we were OUT of warranty on the product and they would not accept it back. My client who was fairly well healed at the time, brought the machine to a local white-box maker and had it remade using other parts into a machine that worked at his own expense. Most of the gateway boards ended up in a trash heap. The experience, especially the frustration of not even being able to reliably contact Gateway customer service (due to wait times), convinced me to never buy a Gateway, and never recommend one to a friend or client. I have no idea if they have improved in the 3 years since this experience. I have no further information at all. I hope that this helps. Craig