Gateway Completes eMachines Acquisition

ryanjensen writes "Gateway just completed its $289.5 million deal to acquire Irvine, CA-based eMachines Thursday according to News.com. From the article: 'Many analysts believe that Gateway ultimately will abandon some or all of its namesake stores in favor of selling products at third-party retailers. However, they expect the company to continue selling Gateway-brand products, including PCs and consumer electronics, directly to its customers.'"

Comments

AMD

[swordboy]

Does this mean that they will start selling AMD processors? Great - all they need to do now is get Microsloth to stop delaying 64-bit Windows for Intel.

It'll be ready in January my ass...

Re:AMD

[DaHat]

what does a 64-bit version of windows for intel have to do with AMD processors?

Re:AMD

[spookymonster]

I think he was referring to the conspiracy theory that MS is holding off on the official release of 64-bit Windows as a courtesy to Intel. Supposedly, they'll release it once Intel's consumer-grade 64-bit CPUs start hitting the shelves, thus levelling out any advantage AMD might have had in getting their 64-bit CPU to market first.

Of course, those who have downloaded the 64-bit Windows demo from MS report that it isn't ready for prime time yet, mainly because of the lack of 3rd party drivers...

And future systems from the merged companies...

[dark404]

...will be called e-Cows, now with twice as much ugly.

Re:And future systems from the merged companies...

[MooKore 2004]

And will be running Gentoo Linux, the cow os.

Re:And future systems from the merged companies...

[operagost]

You jest, but I'm sure that if Gateway sold computers that had Holstein-patterned cases like the boxes they come in, they would sell a LOT.

Argh Gateway

[Killjoy_NL]

Ok, I love the packaging with the cow motif (if they are still using that), but that's all I like about it.

I had to set up a gateway computer for my uncle a few years back, used the restore cd's and Windows kept f*cking itself up.
I could blame Microsoft for this one, but the horrid restore-menu-architecture was the source of all my anguish.

This and not having an internet connection handy really ruined my day.

Has their software improved over the years, anyone??

Re:Argh Gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I get the general Gateway-hate among geeks. I have 5 computers here, one of them is a Gateway Pentium III 600. I've never had any problems with it whatsoever.

It came with Win98, which ran fine on the machine. Eventually I "upgraded" to WinME, which ran fine (at least as best as can be expected from WinME) on the machine. Now it runs Win2K, which runs fine on the machine. Everything aside from the OS is still factory. And while I've wiped the drive to upgrade Windows a few times, there's never been any trouble aside from the usual "Windows has been installed for 2 years, and it's getting slow as hell" that happens on any machine.

My only possible complaint is that the hard drive has gotten loud, when that thing's spinning, it's hard to think in the same room. I don't consider that Gateway's fault, though, as I've seen the same thing happen with countless drives.

--
Rate Naked People at FuckMeter! Free pr0n for the masses.

Re:Argh Gateway

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

I love the packaging with the cow motif

I could blame Microsoft for this one, but the horrid restore-menu-architecture was the source of all my anguish.

I love the packaging with the cow motif
I love the packaging with the cow motif

For some reason I'm not blaming the software for this problem.

Re:Argh Gateway

[Mr Guy]

It has alot to do with luck and expectations. The real beef with Gateway is that they play a numbers game, as do most of the mass marketed computers. They use the confusing nature of PC marketing to sell overpriced computers that have higher fail rates for each part and run slower than they seem like they should. They sell a 2.4 Celeron with PC2100 RAM and their consumers are happy only because it's faster than that 866 they upgraded from, if only just barely. They have no idea they could get a MUCH faster machine by using an AMD 2.4 Barton with PC2700 RAM for roughly the same price, because they do nothing to educated their users. As someone else said about emachines, when chosing between quality and cheap, they always always always chose cheap. You just got lucky and got one without a flaw.

Re:Argh Gateway

[pebs]

I'm not sure I get the general Gateway-hate among geeks. I have 5 computers here, one of them is a Gateway Pentium III 600. I've never had any problems with it whatsoever.

I've never liked Gateway. I bought a used P2-266 for really cheap. The only thing good in it was the motherboard and cpu. Everything else was mostly weird proprietary shit. The case was sick mess, and the cd-rom and floppy drives had curvy plastic on the front which made it completely clash with any other case. The power supply was something terrible, I ripped it apart and only kept the fan that was in it (but the fan was a piece of shit). The motherboard used onboard video for which there was no Win2k drivers, though I can't totally fault Gateway for that, and the board itself is pretty stable.

So, like many other system builders, Gateway takes a decent mobo and CPU, and slaps a bunch of cheap and/or proprietary crap onto it which any self-respecting geek would completely replace. So why not just buy the mobo and CPU and build your own?

From what I have seen, eMachines was starting to produce machines that were actually good (contrary to their earlier reputation). I really hope Gateway doesn't fuck it up. Though, maybe Gateway is better these days, I dunno, I haven't used a recent Gateway, but all the older ones I've used pretty much sucked.

MicronPC, on the otherhand, put out some good PC's back then (around the time of P1 and P2), and they still do. And they sell AMD-based machines. If I have to recommend a system builder, I recommend them.

Re:Argh Gateway

[FictionPimp]

My problem with gateway started in 2000. I had ordered a few computers from them before that in 98-99 for me and my family. I was upgrading my pc and already had a great sound card I wanted to keep. So I asked them to remove the sound card (a practice they never had a problem with before) and I was told that removing the sound card was impossible (it was a non-intergrated card btw, when I received the computer it was a SB128) I was told windows 98 required a sound card and would not run without one!!!

I would of stopped right then and there and built my own pc, but my parents where buying the pc for me and refused to let me build it. Claimed I didn't have the knowege, an excuse I still use today when they call me for support :-) Of couse that makes them wonder what all that money for my certs was for though.

Re:Argh Gateway

[bturnip]

I had a very good experience from a PIII-450 era Gateway machine. In fact, my fiancee now uses that machine, though RAM, video, hard drives, etc. are all different. For me, Gateway's customer service was very good. I had a couple problems when I first had the machine shipped to me, and the new parts arrived the day after calling tech support each time. I am by no means a computer expert, but I am the closest thing to it in the small office where I work. One of my coworker was asking me about what computer he should buy and asked me about eMachines. My experience trying to help other people with their crappy eMachines led me to tell him to run in the opposite direction of any eMachine salesman. As it turned out, he didn't take my advice :) He bought an eMachines laptop. I have to tell you, I was very impressed with what he got for the price he paid. He hasn't had it very long, but my coworker absolutely loves it and has had no problems of any kind whatsoever. If I hadn't had the experience of somebody else buying one and loving it, I would probably never consider an eMachines laptop. Now, after seeing one, I am thinking about getting my fiancee one. My $.02, Danny

Re:Argh Gateway

[Marc Desrochers]

I don't get it either. I'm a tech in a university, and we have a large batch of P4 2.6GHz E-series Gateways (E-4100). The motherboards use intel chipsets and the CPUs are real P4, not celeries. The Machines run fine, use all standard components case included, which I'll admit, I like. The only component whio's quality I would question is the power-supply, though we have had no trouble with any of them yet. I would even consider taking one or more of these home when they start replacing them, which won't be for a while I guess, we just got them.

Re:Argh Gateway

[ipxodi]

My experience with Gateway in 1999 caused me, as a Network Admin, to never buy Gateway again. My company bought 10 new "identical" Gateway PCs. When we received them in, I got ready to build one and clone the rest in order to make "standard" PCs. Well, lo-and-behold, the PCs weren't identical! Even though we had ordered all the same model # and specs, gateway had used different sound cards, video cards, network cards, etc. They all had the same "specs", but weren't really identical.
Pulling crap like that really increases the support costs for a corporate network.
Because of that, now that I'm in charge of determining what brands we buy, Gateway is not on my vendor list.

Re:Argh Gateway

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I like Gateway as much as any other PC maker, in my experience they use decent components, a decent case, and standard components so they're easy to upgrade. They may not be as sharp looking as Dells, but outward beauty is not my primary consideration for my PC. (Actually, I build my own anyway)

Re:Argh Gateway

[operagost]

You didn't really say what was terrible about the PS, and I don't see how the fact that the floppy and CD-ROMs had custom faceplates should matter. What do you mean, "clash with any other case?" If you were removing them to put in another system, I'd say that removes any obligation from Gateway at the point.

I'd also suggest that, since you got it second hand, the "sick mess" inside the case may be the fault of the previous owner.

Re:Argh Gateway

[slaker]

Wrong way. He's referring to the fact that his case needed a specially-shaped CD-ROM and floppy and that he couldn't replace them.

Re:Argh Gateway

[default luser]

I know exactly what he was talking about, I used to do support for Gateways (my college had a deal with them for labs, faculty and direct to student sales).

The early Pentium IIs they released in 1997 were standard ATX systems. As for the CD-ROM, on some models it had a curved front on the loading tray to match the decorative curved front of the case. You do know that you can replace loading trays quite easily, don't you?

The only reason why such asthetic changes were made was because many PC manufacturers were making them at the time to distingush themselves in a crowded marketplace. In 1998-99 Gateway changed their case designs and removed all the curved plastic, as big market leaders like Dell were forcing them to cut corners to remain competitive.

Also, I can't vouch for every system they've ever made, but every Gateway system I encountered ( vintage 1997 or later ) used an ATX-compliant PS.

Re:Argh Gateway

[Lord Kano]

They have no idea they could get a MUCH faster machine by using an AMD 2.4 Barton with PC2700 RAM for roughly the same price, because they do nothing to educated their users.

I don't think it's the computer maker's job to educate their users. The users themselves should be out getting the knowledge that they need to make educated decisions. When I used to sell computers I would take every opportunity to explain to people why it would benefit them to buy something more than the cheapest thing we had, if they could afford it. But HP/Compaq/Gateway/Et Al don't have any obligation to do this.

If you're not willing to learn how to put your own fuel in it, you probably shouldn't be out buying a new car. If you're not willing to learn at least the basics of computer use, then perhaps you shouldn't be out buying one.

LK

Re:Argh Gateway

[zakezuke]

I'm not sure I get the general Gateway-hate among geeks

The year was 1997 or so, and someone I knew was silly enough to buy one of the gateway premium systems. We're talking the 27inch monitor / TV, Harmon Karmon audio, and video digitizer. In excess of $4000 was spent on this set.

The system core was a pentium II 266 with 72pin simms, that one chipset that was common among among the pentium pro so not even a 440bx nor 440lx... I believe it was the 440fx as seen in the intel portland motherboard. No agp video.

For your $4000 you got a system that was far too slugish to record video in realtime, bought by users who really didn't have the experence base to resolve the problem. You got a monitor who's resolution was piss poor, not really readable at 640*480, and it's not like vga TVs didn't exist at the time, they just didn't sell you one. It's not like they couldn't have sold you a i440bx or even an i440lx with pc66 / pc100 memory. I assume they were so hip in the idea of getting rid of their stock of 72pin EDO memory they didn't even consider that it might be too slugish for some of the as advertised application for said pc.

Re:Argh Gateway

[Mr Guy]

Perhaps, but on the same note consumers do expect the things they are told to be comparable. AMD felt the same way and began to rename their chip lines to be comparable for performance. Intel clearly doesn't, as they have no problem with labelling a Celeron and a Pentium with the same numbers. Sure, it's the consumers job to educate themselves, but it's not unreasonable for them to expect to believe the numbers they are told.

Re:Argh Gateway

[Lord Kano]

Sure, it's the consumers job to educate themselves, but it's not unreasonable for them to expect to believe the numbers they are told.

Brilliant point sir. We may know that Mhz and real world performance are not always linked. But if WE found that out, it's not impossible for others to.

LK

Re:Argh Gateway

[pebs]

My point was that Gateway's aren't made for geeks. They are made for people who never have any intention of opening their cases and will upgrade by buying an entirely new PC. The guy I was replying to said "I'm not sure I get the general Gateway-hate among geeks." I was explaining where it might be coming from.

You didn't really say what was terrible about the PS, and I don't see how the fact that the floppy and CD-ROMs had custom faceplates should matter. What do you mean, "clash with any other case?"

The power supply was a generic low-wattage power supply that was smaller than even your typical generic power supply. I admit, I did not check the voltages it was providing, but determined it was worthless just from looking at it.

If you were removing them to put in another system, I'd say that removes any obligation from Gateway at the point.

Well, I'm not saying Gateway is obligated to do anything. I'm saying people (especially geeks) should avoid Gateway because their systems may not be easilly upgradable. The reason I ended up with this Gateway was because I was upgrading it for one of my friends. I had most of a system built for them, and I was planning on using some of the old components from their old PC (this Gateway). When I arrived with the PC, I discovered that they had onboard video and sound, and that the CD-ROM and floppy drive didn't quite fit in the new PC. I was able to rip off the plastic on the front of the CD-ROM and floppy drive, but it exposed the insides of the floppy drive, and CD-ROM drive looked really weird. My mistake for assuming a Gateway was easilly upgradable, but I didn't expect it. I ended up buying the remains of it. The mobo and CPU were nice enough, everything else was junk.

I'd also suggest that, since you got it second hand, the "sick mess" inside the case may be the fault of the previous owner.

I said the case itself was a sick mess, not what was inside. Doing something simple like replacing the hard drive was a major ordeal. It was really that bad.

Though I have not seen a recent Gateway, so I don't know if its still this bad.

Irvine, CA?

[dillon_rinker]

The last acquisition Gateway made was also based in Irvine, CA: server manufacturer ALR. Does the Gateway acquisitions guy ever leave Irvine? And will Gateway ruin eMachines the way they ruined ALR?

Re:Irvine, CA?

[mcocke]

Ruin eMachines ?????

How do you ruin complete utter crap? I've been stuck with trying to use / repair a few eMachines in my career... I honestly cannot think of a worse piece of junk. Every single design decision between cheap and useable went to cheap.
They aren't the right shape for wheel chocks, nor heavy enough for boat anchors, and they certainly aren't anything like computers!

I never had a very high opinion of Gateway (too much "we'll sell you anything, but use whatever componants we can get cheap this week to build it."), but this really sinks them.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[Anonymous Coward]

And will Gateway ruin eMachines the way they ruined ALR?

Or Amiga. Oh yeah, remember that one?

I didn't even realise Gateway were still solvent, let alone in a position to throw $289.5million at an aquisition.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[Chiron Taltos]

And will Gateway ruin eMachines the way they ruined ALR?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[nakedsource]

There was a time when you were absolutely right about emachines. But the last 18 months they have turned around and made themselves in the value leader for desktops and laptops. I own a laptop with Athlon XP 2500, 512 megs, 606 gig, integrated ATI graphics and a 16x10 15 inch screen. got it for 1100.00 US and now it's below 1K. No problems so far. And it has wireles and ethernet built in. I'm really worried that gateway will mess them up.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[gui_tarzan2000]

C'mon guys. Gateway is a good company. We've been using their machines since 1995 and have had really good luck with them, but more importantly their tech support. When we've needed it, it's been rock solid and fast. Right now we've got almost 400 desktops and laptops in service from the lowly P5-166 (only a few left) to the brand new E series desktops and the 400 and 450 series laptops. All of them are virtually trouble free including the new 900 series servers I bought last summer.

On the other hand, we've got about 85 Dell desktops and laptops and I'll never buy another Dell. Their tech support has been horrid at best.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[danheskett]

DItton the on the e-machines...

A friend's girlfriend has a similiar laptop-- it's really hot and nice.

Mother-in law just got a desktop. $600 with a 17" flat-screen CRT. Can't argue with that. It's peppy and fast, good standard components (I checked), and a nice integrated package.

Re:Irvine, CA?

[Anonymous Coward]

to irvine! we have some work to do *gets out hatchet*

Re:Irvine, CA?

[Anonymous Coward]

it'll be tough for gateway to ruin emachines when the wayne inouye, ceo of emachines is taking over gateway. You should know what you're talking about before you speak.

Norelco?

[amichalo]

Reminds me of those 1980's shaver commercials gone bad - "I liked it so much I bought th ecompany".

A company I used to work for bought one eMachine to see if we wanted to deploy them throughout the organization. They were horrible. came deliverred with the ram unseated so it wouldn't even boot out of the box.

After using just one eMachine, I have no idea what someone would do with the entire company.

Re:Norelco?

[DaHat]

Despite your experience with a single unit, eMachines has truly gotten their act together in recent years.

In the early fall when I was looking for a laptop, I found the eMachines M5310 (I think it is) to offer the best bang for my buck, XP 2400+, 40 gig hd, 802.11g wifi. It's not the smallest or lightest unit to say the least, however it does it's job wonderfully, hell, I even use it for lan parties from time to time! If only Battlefield would take advantage of the wide screen.

I too back in the day came to despise the name of eMachines, but I gave them a shot. When people first see my laptop they say "I didn't know they made laptops" and walk away quite impressed.

But now Gateway... the definition of crap.

Re:Norelco?

[Roger Keith Barrett]

It wasn't Norelco... it was Remington with the "I liked it so much I bought the company" ads.

Norelco first built the 3 headed raisors... Remington has the screens.. "The first one cuts incredibly close, the second even closer!"

Re:Norelco?

[IANAAC]

I have the same laptop and I really love it. A couple of minor things to set it up with Linux, but I was able to get through them. I also have a fairly recent desktop - also AMD - from them that performs nicely. They really have gotten their aft together in my opinion. I hope that with the acquisition the quality doesn't drop. I can only hope that Gateway is getting better suppliers and better quality control with the purchase.

Re:Norelco?

[Anonymous Coward]

When people first see my laptop they say "I didn't know they made laptops" and walk away quite impressed.

They probably DON'T make the laptop. They probably buy it prebuilt from some Taiwanese company, whereas their desktop machines (which are crap) are probably built in some warehouse they own. Laptops are hard to screw up if you buy it from a decent OEM.

Re:Norelco?

[kaatochacha]

I recently bought an emachines, celeron 2.6, for roughly US$ 350 and have had nothing but good results with it. It replaced a hand shopped system that had nothing but trouble from multiple, highly rated parts happening to be bad. I've heard they used to be terrible, and I was expecting problems, but nothing at all has turned up so far.

Re:Norelco?

[phalse phace]

"eMachines has truly gotten their act together in recent years."

Maybe. But not from what I've seen. About a year ago, a buddy of mine got an eMachines from Best Buy for his kids. Upon taking it out of the box and setting it up, it started having problems. The computer would crash, the modem didn't work, etc.

I tried to help him, but nothing worked. Eventually, he exchanged the unit for another eMachines, thinking it was probably just a bad one. He ended up having the same problems with the 2nd one, and the 3rd one. It wasn't until his 4th return that the eMachines he got for his kids worked properly.

The only reason he stayed with Best Buy is because of the line of credit they offered him. I suggested going with Dell or HP/Compaq instead, but it came down to price in the end. That's why he stuck with eMachines.

In my opinion, eMachines is still crap.

Re:Norelco?

[leek]

Correct.

Norelo (a division of Philips) had their patented "lift and cut" system of rotary blades, the patent of which just ran out recently (you now see no-name brands of razors in discount stores which look just like Norelcos -- with 3 rotary heads).

Personally I never liked Norelcos, since their rotary blades irritate my skin and don't even cut close enough.

Which is why, like Victor Kiam, I prefer Remingtons.

Kiam bought Remington from Sperry before Sperry joined with Burroughs to become Unisys.

Today, Rayovac, the battery maker, owns Remington.

Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[amichalo]

When Apple first announced they would open stores nationwide, people pointed to the then already declining Gateway Country Store profitability and said "Jobs, what are you thinking?"

But there is an obvious difference between the two retail stores. What are the core differences and how could things turn around Gateway or Apple's currernt trends?

Not a rhetorical question - please don't flame!

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maintaining a retail presence is a nightmare for anyone unless they keep qualified techs handy. That's the one reason people will 'like' a brick & mortar offering.

And, not to spark a fight, but there's no accounting for what Jobs is thinking.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[adzoox]

Apple is a marketing genius - Gateway is a computer company that sells computers just like everyone else.

When Apple wants a good MP3 player - they create one from scratch and THEN create a market for it (iPod + iTunes Music Store)

Gateway wants an MP3 player - they copy the iPod or actually copy a clone already on the market.

Gateway wants a camera, they rebrand a Canon, Gateway wants a printer, same thing - rebrand.

When Apple was rebranding, they were in dire straits - HP inkjets - 630c rebranded as Stylewriter 4500 - Canon Inkjets - rebranded as Stylewriter 2500 Quicktake Camera (developed by Apple and exclusive to them for 6 months) but really just a rebranded Fuji DS7 camera. Apple chooses to cater to the base and to innovate. Gateway - what base do they have to cater to - a PC is a PC is a PC - if someone offered the same box $5 cheaper 2 miles closer than the Gateway Store, they'd buy it. Apple has a brand and they market and please it's customers (mostly)

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Apple first announced they would open stores nationwide, people pointed to the then already declining Gateway Country Store profitability and said "Jobs, what are you thinking?"

But there is an obvious difference between the two retail stores. What are the core differences and how could things turn around Gateway or Apple's currernt trends?

It may not be a rhetorical question, but it's not really a valid one either IMO, as it compares Apples to Orang^WGateways.

Apple's stores are always going to do better, in terms of revenue, than Gateway's stores. Why? Because - assuming there's one of either store located near you - you can buy a PC anywhere. At Gateway's store, at Best Buy, at CompUSA, hell, you can even buy a PC at Wally-Mart. It might not be a Gateway (and, in fact it might), but it's a PC, and it can run Windows, and that's all most people care about. You can get them everywhere.

You can't, on the other hand, just walk into any ol' store and buy a Mac. My local Best Buy doesn't sell Macs. Neither does my local CompUSA. And neither do any of the (far too freakin' many) local WallyMarts. To the best of my knowledge, the only local store where I can walk in and buy a Mac, is the local Apple store.

People who want Macs have to get them from a) an Apple store, b) online, or c) an authorized Apple retailer. In general, markets who have an Apple store do not have many (if any) authorized Apple retailers, for reasons you can probably imagine. Markets with no Apple store generally have 2 local Apple authorized retailers.

This is why the Apple stores will always do better than the Gateway stores - they're filling a demand which can't be met, in brick-and-mortar terms, elsewhere.

--
Rate Naked People at Fuck Meter! Free pr0n Friday!

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[DaHat]

True, however you've got to admit, from the marketing prospective, there is a great advantage to rebranding... the final product has your name on it! Another major advantage, this time for the customer is tech support from a single house.

Like it or not, most of the people who buy from a company like Gateway are not going to drive down the street to see if the same camera costs a few bucks less, they'll buy it from Gateway or even along with their desktop or laptop and have support from the same company.

A couple of years ago while getting a tour of the Gateway tech support center in Sioux Falls, SD, I was surprised when many of the end calls would end with the tech asking if there was anything else the customer needed like an scanner or digital camera, I was even more surprised that there were quite a few who would want to be transferred to a salesmen to be sold on such a device.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Cam Wheeler]

Based on my recent observations of friends and colleagues buying computer parts, if someone offered the same box $5 cheaper, but 2 miles FURTHER away from their local computer store, they'd still drive the extra distance to save what amounts to pocket change.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[droleary]

True, however you've got to admit, from the marketing prospective, there is a great advantage to rebranding... the final product has your name on it! Another major advantage, this time for the customer is tech support from a single house.

Neither is an plus. For the first, you're giving your name to a product you don't control. If a company makes great products, they're going to want to keep their name on it. The only way you'll get to rebrand something is if you drop a lot of money for something good (not up Gateway's alley) or get something inferior (more common by far). So, bully, you've just attached your name to a bad product. Now, your second "advantage", you have to support it. This crappy thing you have no control over is now taking customer service away from supporting your primary product. Disaster all around.

Like it or not, most of the people who buy from a company like Gateway are not going to drive down the street to see if the same camera costs a few bucks less, they'll buy it from Gateway or even along with their desktop or laptop and have support from the same company.

Ever been to an Apple Store? They have cameras and other stuff all over the place, they're just smart enough not to label them as Apple products.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Complicity]

But there is an obvious difference between the two retail stores. What are the core differences

The answer, my friend, lies with today's Penny Arcade comic... :)

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Paulrothrock]

Another thing: Anything you see on display in an Apple Store you can take home that day. Instant gratification.

You buy from Gateway Country, and you have to wait to have it shipped. If you want instant gratification, you can go to Best Buy.

Also, people who work at Gateway Country, at least the ones I've encountered, are doing it like they'd do another retail job. Apple's stores are better because the people there care about the product they're selling. Most of them are Mac users. Also, Apple trains them to be the best.

In other words, Apple did what it does best; being the best it can, while Gateway simply rebranded.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[lonesome phreak]

, I was surprised when many of the end calls would end with the tech asking if there was anything else the customer needed like an scanner or digital camera

Don't be...at the local Sprint PCS call center the techs are now forced to sell over the phone like that. The gateway tech support people where probably forced to sell AND do tech support.

I've only worked in a single call center, but it was an inside-only center for a huge corp. I shudder when I hear the horror stories of people in other real "outsourced" call centers. And Tulsa has quite a few...at least ten different centers in the metro area. We even had VA Linux here for awhile.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Lebooge]

I have a friend that is in low-level management in their Sioux Falls complex, and his opinion is that the Gateway Country stores will close and that at least some Gateway-branded items will start working their way into Best Buy and other similar chains. The Gateway stores were trying to be be what the Apple stores are. The intent was to be the point of Sale, but also to act as a repair drop-off site and as a training center. The training aspect never really took off, from what I'm told, and Gateway figures that they can save some major cash by closing down the stores and letting the big box stores do the selling for them.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every CompUSA I've ever gone into has an entire section devoted to Macs. Most chains have a thing about the consistency of their store layouts and offerings. Where do you live?

I do agree with your point that the number of retail stores selling macs is limited.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[nelsonal]

In short, Apple executes retail much better than Gateway. Several major resons are Apple's bigger hardware margins give them more money to toss around (hiring better employees, getting better store locations, etc) without taking a loss. Gateway has roughly the same gross margins as Dell (mid to high teens). Gross margins are the amount that is left after you pay for your manufacturing inputs, in PCs that is components and assembly. Apple has about 10% higher gross margins (mid 20% range). This means that an Apple store that boost sales by $100 million/yr but requires $16 million/yr is quite profitable, but a Gateway store that adds $100 million in sales and costs $12 million is not. So you can see that even a much more efficient store owned Gateway could be a terrible idea, but is a great idea for Apple.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[IANAAC]

If a company makes great products, they're going to want to keep their name on it.

Not sure I agree with this. If a company wants to stay in business (particularly a publicly traded company) they will want to sell their product through as many channels as they possibly can. Deals with PC manufacturers provide income that might not be earned otherwise.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[RLiegh]

For only $5? you damned near spend that in gas! (at least in the san fran area you wuold) After a certain point, it's a matter of deminishing returns. Oh well, I'm sure they feel better, at least!

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[PitaBred]

I've seen that happen with more than computer parts. Drive 10 miles out of their way to go get some lawn chairs that were $2 cheaper.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[droleary]

If a company wants to stay in business (particularly a publicly traded company) they will want to sell their product through as many channels as they possibly can. Deals with PC manufacturers provide income that might not be earned otherwise.

That's true, but it doesn't change my statement. Yes, they'll take what they couldn't otherwise get, but they'd still want to keep their name on a good product. It's a tight spot for all companies involved, because brand X might take the chance to go on its own if the market is good enough, or the rebrander Y could just drop them to go with a cheaper alternative if they thought the Y name was more valuable than having the X product. It's not an easy dynamic to figure out, which is why Apple probably does the smart thing in controlling as much as they can themselves.

Interestingly, they started working with HP not too long back to rebrand the iPod. So, despite the Apple brand being quite strong, clearly they've worked out some way it makes more sense to be a product supplier as well. I think that is most interesting because I wonder what Apple will do in the future. It would be really cute to see HP rebrand Apple desktops as well. After all, they currently just rebrand various Wintel machines, so would it be out of the question to introduce a rebranded iMac into their lineup?

Apple is in an enviable position of having both good tech and a good brand, so they can pretty much play the game any way they figure makes the most sense. Gateway, on the other hand, is just another box builder with a mediocre brand name. The purchase of eMachines does nothing for them. They would have been smarter to try and jump HP's gun in partnering with Apple.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[operagost]

Your car must only get forty rods to the hogshead.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and Gateway went down two very different marketing paths with their stores. Generally speaking, Gateway opened its stores in locations without a lot of foot traffic and in street mall or strip-mall areas with relatively cheap rent. Essentially, only people intending to go to a Gateway store end up there.

Apple, on the other hand, chooses malls and street fronts that have extremely high foot traffic, are in wealthier shopping sections of town, and are generally in high-profile/high-rent malls. If you have 10 thousand people walk by your store every day, you're much more likely to pick up some sales by people just dropping in to see things while their spouses are shopping at nearby stores (for example).

This is why you probably won't see much over 100 Apple Stores in the USA--unlike Gateway which had well over 300 at their height. There just aren't that many high-traffic areas that can guarantee a healthy financial return. That also sort of explains current rumors circulating about Apple coming out with "mini" stores near major college campuses in the near future. Foot traffic there generally isn't huge like at the malls, but there's enough of a market in these places that if you have a tiny store, and aren't paying much in the way of infrastructure and rent, you can probably make out well.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[timmyf2371]

The industry term for it is "Revenue Generation". Each agent is measured upon a range of stats, one of which being Revenue Generation and they must meet a certain percent of targets in a given month.

Also, during an observe-and-coach session, where a manager or a senior monitor's the agent's call, if the agent doesn't try to generate a lead during the call then he/she would be marked down.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[lonesome phreak]

Interesting. The techs are pretty pissed off about it, because they didn't used to have to do it. They don't get any more time to handle phone calls either. They are still guided by the old metric on the call resolution times, and now have to sell things as well.

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at the Gateway Country Store and believe it or not they actually have a wide variety of computers and laptops in stock. They started this in the fall of 2002, but it did not really kick into gear until the summer of the next year. And on another note, the people working at the gateway store are on commision. So they are salesman, not the people at circuit city who just stand around and collect their hourly wage. So the salesman do care about their products (I know i did), because making someone believe it is good requires you to believe in it too. I think it was Donald Trump in a recent Apprentice episode who made that point clear. (And in my opinion, he is THE man).

Re:Country Store vs. Apple Store?

[amichalo]

So why do you say:
"What are the core differences and how could things turn around Gateway or Apple's currernt trends?" - It may not be a rhetorical question, but it's not really a valid one either IMO, as it compares Apples to Orang^WGateways.
What makes the above question invalid? "Compare two computer manufacturers' company owned retail stores." You say they are "Apples and Oranges" GREAT, it is invalid to compare and Apple and an orange? I don't think so. You can say what is similar and what is different. That's a comparison, it is totally "valid".

People who want Macs have to get them from a) an Apple store, b) online, or c) an authorized Apple retailer.
How is this different for a Gateway? a) Country Store, b) gateway.com, c) Gateway reseller (no, Gateways aren't sold by distributers to retail outlets like digital cameras and other electronics are. You want to sell Gateways, you have to be a Gateway authorized reseller.)

In general, markets who have an Apple store do not have many (if any) authorized Apple retailers, for reasons you can probably imagine. Markets with no Apple store generally have 2 local Apple authorized retailers.
This is just not true. New York City disproves that little theory. In fact, since Apple stores are in the major metro areas, I would say they are MORE common where existing Apple retailers exist.

Gateway taking a dagger?

[GeckoFood]

My experiences with eMachines have generally been negative. I hope Gateway will fix what's broken there, or they will really screw the pooch and end up hurting themselves more than helping.

Re:Gateway taking a dagger?

[laddhebert]

My early experiences with Dell were usually negative also. But they cleaned up their act to become one of the top 3 in the business. I agree, emachines were crap when they first arrived, but I have to say the m6807, amd64 laptop is nothing to scoff about.

-L

Re:Gateway taking a dagger?

[wolf-]

I have a EMachines 600id that has been running for almost 5 years now.

Straight out of the box, we removed windows ME and dropped linux on it.

Other than an HD in it, its been running as a little mail server/firewall since day one.

Re:Gateway taking a dagger?

[lukewarmfusion]

Maybe Gateway will fix what's wrong at Gateway, too.

Over the last few years, I've been awfully disappointed with Gateway. Dell and HP have their problems too, but Gateway puts together overpriced crappy machines filled with cheap parts. You're paying for the 1-800...

At least with e-Machines, you get what you pay for. Gateway produces the same level of machine, but charges you a lot more for them.

Re:Gateway taking a dagger?

[abhisarda]

True.
Take a look at this. Scroll down and read the customer comments on that page. Scary. I agree Dell and HP are not too good either but they are surely better than the junk Gateway is offering. Unless they improve quality or drastically reduce pricing, they will be looking at exiting the market in 2-3 years or getting bought out.

Re:Gateway taking a dagger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I have a new eMachine desktop and it's pretty good. nVidia mobo, 2800+ AMD XP, 160GB HD, DVD-RW, in all a very nice computer and cheaper than getting many other brands. I haven't had any real problems with it so far. I know that eMachines has had a poor reputation in the past, but they seemed to have turned around and started using good hardware.

Can anyone confirm this Intel rumor?

[laddhebert]

I was reading another board last week about the sell of e-machines (I had just purchased the m6805 - amd 64 laptop) and one of the posters said the chances of amd 64 chips being released on a wide scale was probably not going to look good at the present time because Intel worked out 2 year contracts with most of the large manufacturers of laptops and desktops such as Dell HP, and Gateway. Since Gateway now owns emachines, it seems likely that their amd64 lines of laptops will be discontinued. I did notice that HP released a 64 bit laptop, along with Toshiba too.

Let's hope these rumors are just that - rumors.

-L

Re:Can anyone confirm this Intel rumor?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's against federal law for Intel to force Gateway to NOT use one of their competitor's chips... any contract that does so would seem to violate any number of anti-monopoly laws...

IANAL...

Re:Can anyone confirm this Intel rumor?

[archen]

I don't think that violates any law, you are bound to a contract which you willingly agreed to (which these companies did). I don't think Intel qualifies as a monopoly either. The laws which govern monopolies do so when some company can pressure a customer to buy their product because of lack of competition. I don't think that's what happened. It's true that Intel gets these companies to sign contracts, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Intel makes the fastest chip by clockspeed. Most people don't know how to estamate performance, they just see something is faster by it's bigger number (Ghz), and its hard for a vendor to go with AMD when your compeditor sells Intel chips which appear to be a lot faster.

If it is true that they can't sell amd64's, then this could be a cool oportunity for smaller shops that build computers.

Re:Can anyone confirm this Intel rumor?

[ryanjensen]

If eMachines had a contract with AMD to sell their 64-bit processors for a certain amount of time (assuming it hasn't expired yet), Gateway must honor that agreement or pay a penalty for breach of contract. I guess your worries depend on how much time is left on the AMD 64-bit contract.

abandoning stores?

[vasqzr]

They closed our Gateway Store about a year ago...

It was a pretty nice place. Gateway used to make a pretty nice box in the 90's. Haven't had much contact with their products since the whole Dell/Compaq/HP domination.

I don't think they'll be in the PC business for that much longer.

Re:abandoning stores?

[software_tweaker]

Actually they have closed a lot of their stores as it seemed that they were bound to go out of business. However in the last year or so they have started making a lot of other products rather than just PC's. Maybe this will allow them to bounce back.

Aha!

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

I had just purchased the m6805 - amd 64 laptop

I found the problem

Re:Aha!

[PitaBred]

It's actually a very nice machine. I'm typing this on one of them right now, running Linux and XP in a dual boot. Does everything I want, nothing I don't, comes with a virtually standard Windows install, very fast, seems solid construction (I haven't dropped, don't want to test it, either). eMachines has changed their quality. Hell, my mom has an old eMachines celery 600 that's running great for her for the last 2 or 3 years, since we got it used. Of course, as with everything, YMMV.

name

[firstadopter.com]

I kind of doubt Gateway would ever change its name. I mean Gateway or eMachines? Ugh.

Re:name

[nfotxn]

I think they should change their name back to Gateway 2000!

Didn't they go bankrupt?

[subjectstorm]

wtf?

i thought gateway was on the verge of bankruptcy maybe 6 months ago. i was actually happy when i heard they were tanking . . . and now they've dropped nearly 300 million on eMachines? what?

did their plasma screens really sell THAT well?

i must have missed something here.

Re:Didn't they go bankrupt?

[DaHat]

I've got a friend who used to work at Gateway and gave me some good inside info on the company... As much as I've been hoping to see them go belly up and die a horrible horrible death, I'm told that they have a rather sizeable pile of cash to be able to sustain them for several years while at a significant loss.

Nice thing about such a piggy bank is you can use it to buy things you want... however it can mean that your safty net gets a bit smaller.

Re:Didn't they go bankrupt?

[artemis67]

...and what exactly was Ted Wiatt's relationship with that cow? They never did explain that in the commercials for some reason...

Re:Didn't they go bankrupt?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the first year of selling their plasma units, Gateway actually took 35% of the market share. I used to work at the stores too, and believe it or not, those plasmas saved them for awhile longer. A very good move they did by moving to plasmas.

Major difference

[psichaotic]

The (thankfuly few) Gateways that I have had to deal with for the most part required you get replacement parts from gateway because they tried to play the, "hey, only Gateway parts fit in here" such as the odd sized floppy for example, or the misaligned screwholes,

I also rememebr some of the "pizza box" models where it was impractically difficult just to get the case open. Some of those things would have cut you fingertips off trying to slide the top off too fast.

I was almost expecting a hole for you to put your cigars in.

As far as the cow box, its not nearly as fun as the real thing. They dont tip over, you cant eat em, and you cant even grow shrooms on em.

Just for the record, they explode quite nicely when an m-80 is shoved into their rectum.

and, i half expected them to come with a free NASCAR sticker.

"the inner machinations of my mind, are an enigma"

-patrick star

Re:Major difference

[Brooklynoid]

> Just for the record, they explode quite nicely when an m-80 is shoved into their rectum.


Which? The cows, or the boxes?

Re:Major difference

[Mr Guy]

You OPENED THE BOX? Didn't you see the STICKER!!!!1!1!1! YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY VOIDED YOUR WARRENTY YOU FOOL!

Re:Major difference

[psichaotic]

The boxes you insensitive clod... Just for the record, I think cow hide would be able to contain the explosion... mostly I wouldnt stand behind them if you decide to test the theory however

Re:Major difference

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at Compusa during high school repairing their crap, from about 1996-1997...

gateways were so horrible, we charged double the hourly rate to repair them

Cost

[8tim8]

Gateway just completed its $289.5 million deal

Actually, it was $189.5 million with the mail-in rebate...

Re:Cost

[Raven42rac]

The parts are probably only worth $18.95 though.

birds of a feather...

[dthree]

This merger makes perfect sense: one mediocre computer company buying another mediocre one.

I actually thought gateway was trying to move OUT of the PC business, with all the consumer electronics they introduced recently. Guess not.

Re:birds of a feather...

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

There electronics business is based on mis-information. There cameras are low end retagged Cannon's and there printers are ink chugging HP's, if i'm not mistaken (print 5 test/set-up pages to really get those inks down). However, what makes me really mad is the Plasma screens that they sell. They should have to make it completely clear that those "digital flat panels" are not full Hi Def. but are EDTV. Not that EDTV isn't great, my room mate has one in our apartment and a DVD looks just as good on our ED as it would on an HD. I hate it when people drool over the price, comparing it to a $8,000 Fujitsu Plasmavision of the same size, and think that Gateway is really hooking you up. The only saving grace that I can see is that they will cheapen there brand by selling so low. When it comes to electronics, people are still willing to pay Sony's out of line prices because of better percieved quality. Not that Sony doesn't offer some great stuff, but I find that other brands hold up just fine when compared to Sony's offering.

Re:birds of a feather...

[Zrane]

The idea, more than anything, is to use eMachine's established relationships with retail outlets to try and get the Gateway digital stuff like cameras, TVs, etc(some of which are actually quite nice) into the stores, along with the PC's.

I'm not sure how it's going to work out, but the CEO of eMachines is taking over both comapnies post-merger. Maybe he'll have more business sense than the founder and actually play off the company's strengths instead of jumping off in an ever-shifting list of random directions. Of course, given past choices with the cow-box company, it's going to be hit or miss.

Re:E-machines rock!

[psichaotic]

And what better motivation to get your work done then knowing yur cluster could blow up in your face at any time.

eMachines - a good thing.

[cskaryd]

I've bought 6 of these things for my parents, inlaws, and friends. They're been great. My father has 3 at his small food processing business, I gave one to my inlaws, one to a friend and have one running my mail server.

Aside from the last one, each is essentially used for word processing, email, and web. And they do that well. Each has been in use for at least 2 years, and I've only had to perform one hardware related task on any one of them. (To be fair, my father jammed a screwdriver in the floppy drive to help get the disk out. Argh.)

They've been great machines for the non-computationally-intensive tasks that these people use them for.

I'm 6 for 6 and will continue recommend these machines for the casual user.

Re:eMachines - a good thing.

[Aardpig]

They've been great machines for the non-computationally-intensive tasks that these people use them for.

But don't think that there not suitable for computationally-intensive tasks. I've just had my two Athlon XP 2600+ eMachines mini towers ($550 a piece) running hydrodynamical simulations of pulsating stars for a month. As part of the run, I also had a SunFire V480 4-cpu machine (~ $35,000) crunching along side, and the two eMachines whipped its but!

Re:eMachines - a good thing.

[neafevoc]

Just a quick question. If you need machines for computationally-intensive tasks, wouldn't you want ECC memory? Or does it depend on the magnitude of your computationaly-intensive task? I'm curious in your case. Thanks. :)

Re:eMachines - a good thing.

[Aardpig]

If you need machines for computationally-intensive tasks, wouldn't you want ECC memory?

I don't think that ECC memory help with computationally-intensive tasks; basically, numerical modelling requires high computational throughput but not high availability. If one of the machines crashes, then I reboot it and restart the job (note: this has never actually occurred).

In my case, jobs only take 10 minutes, so I wouldn't lose much during a crash. However, for longer jobs, checkpointing can be used to avoid losing much data.

Other retailers

[$exyNerdie]

Many analysts believe that Gateway ultimately will abandon some or all of its namesake stores in favor of selling products at third-party retailers

I recently bought a gateway M505X laptop at Office Depot. I chose it over eMachines, Toshiba, Sony, Dell and Compaq. It is a great machine and I could just buy it without waiting for it to ship...
I have never seen a gateway computer at a besybuy or compusa though...

Re:Other retailers

[theMerovingian]

they have gateway at office depot, that's the only 3rd party i've seen them at

Thought this was obvious but

[ThePretender]

doesn't crap + crap always = crap?

Bleh

[Remlik]

Gateway horror story:

Company exec decides he doesn't like the IBM thinkpads we've speced and goes out on his own and buys a Gateway laptop (this is roughly 2000).

We say fine, but we aren't responsible for hardware support as it breaks the standard...right...like that works... For some reason exec can't get his Palm to sync up over the serial connection.

Enter me: 4 long frustrating days spent trying everything under the sun to get this beast syncing. Palm syncs on three other desktops and two other laptops with no problem, install it on gateway and nothing.

Tech call #1 to gateway...OS is corrupt reload from rescue disk. Tech call #2, palm is bad...explain that it works everywhere but on gateway.
Tech call #3...CSR almost gets the balls to tell me gateway doesn't support palm, I inform him that I aint yo mammys foo.

Tech call #4 after talking with 2 differnt people I am finally transferred to "level three" support. Guy comes on the phone, reads case notes and says simply "That model's serial port is defectivly impemented, it will not work, you'll need to get later revision..blah blah blah..."

Laptop goes back the next day for full refund, exec gets a fsking thinkpad and has to explain why the seinor IT guy spent 4 days fsking around with his crappy out of standard laptop. He was gone a month later.

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess no one at your office uses Linux then?

I could swear I...

[bob670]

just heard the entire universe yawn??? One marginal company swallowing another seems like some kind of new low for tech sector news.

EAT MOR CHIKIN

[nlinecomputers]

Bad Chick-fil-a joke.

(Shrug) Gateway stores won them ONE customer...

[dpbsmith]

...my wife, who is a careful reader of manuals and a good learner, but not a techie or a computer geek, set out to buy herself a computer a couple of years ago. It was very important to her to do everything by herself without my looking over her shoulder. (You know how annoying it can be when you have a problem and someone sits down at your keyboard, click click type type magic magic and says "works now." Well, it does work, but you have no idea what was changed or why or how to deal with similar problems in the future).

She bought a Gateway specifically because of retail stores where she could look at the stuff, try it, and talk to real, helpful retail salespeople. Plus she liked the idea of her computer coming in a box that looks like a cow.

I don't know what the answer is, but the computer industry is still in a state of self-denial about how difficult and intimidating computer purchases are for the average person. PCs are actually harder to buy, install, and use then they were five years ago. Mail-order is not the answer for everyone, nor are "warehouse" clubs or computer superstores.

I don't know why retail hand-holding isn't working out for Gateway. But I know without it, they would have had one less sale.

Re:(Shrug) Gateway stores won them ONE customer...

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Umm, so what's the conclusion? Was it a good choice?

Re:(Shrug) Gateway stores won them ONE customer...

[garcia]

Oh give me a break...

She bought a Gateway specifically because of retail stores where she could look at the stuff, try it, and talk to real, helpful retail salespeople. Plus she liked the idea of her computer coming in a box that looks like a cow.

I don't know if it was the particular Gateway store she went to but I find Gateway Country Store employees to be aggrivating and useless. I knew a person that worked for a Gateway store. He was your typical "I play games on my computer and I installed my own video card, I am a hardware master!" type person. He knew all the marketing words and memorized all the components that were included in each machine. If you dare asked him a question that went outside his realm of memorization he immediately shutdown and went into MASS-MARKETING mode/speak.

Box looking like a cow, sheesh.

I don't know why retail hand-holding isn't working out for Gateway. But I know without it, they would have had one less sale.

It's like walking into WorstBuy and having three salesmen tell you that they don't work on commission and everyone is knowledgable, just ask any of them. They stand over your shoulder while you shop making you wonder if they think you are going to steal one of their pieces of hardware or if perhaps they think you should buy another brand.

Retail handholding isn't really what most people want. People want to go and browse at their leisure and then ask for help.

I am very pleased w/the e-machine I have in my house (I have talked about this on /. numerous times before). I will never again purchase an e-machine now that Gateway owns it. Sad really, it was an inexpensive and great machine.

Re:(Shrug) Gateway stores won them ONE customer...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Gateway stores are very much like what you describe in your next to last paragraph. I went to the store and since I'd have to wait, I eneded up calling their 1800 number and ordering the machine that way. Also, before it shipped, I realized that I needed something changed on the order. I called and gave the number of the guy I talked to and he set it up and when it got to my house it was perfect. I also added the 3 year warantee as I did not want to buy another desktop for at least that long (to replace that one that is...my wife uses it the most...). It was worth every penny when at 1 and a half years old, the power supply went bad. My only beef is the Country Store took 8-9 days to fix it. They did not stock any spare parts. Personally, I think if they did that, then they could really make a killing by offering quick turn around on simple fixes like this. I realize why they don't stock them (what if they got a whole raft of parts in and they could not use them???), but I think at least for power supplies, they could stock a few. In any case, I love our Gateway. It has been very stable and it peforms very well. The 18 inch Gateway branded LCD is awesome too. I love teh case designs also. I am so over building my own. I would rather use my machine then spend time tweaking drivers and dropping in cards and the like. Also, like it or not, packaging DOES need to look good. Just look at Apple's packaging. It just looks great and the impress a user gets while unpacking it is important even if you think it isn't. The cow spotted box have been around for a while and users like those kind of touches. I think what Gateway does need to do is get out of being a consumer rebrander and just make computers.

Re:(Shrug) Gateway stores won them ONE customer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I can explain, to some degree, why the Gateway store concept failed -- because I used to work for them. Here is the list:

1. No Inventory
2. We used to keep almost zero inventory because corporate wanted the stores just to be in-person catalogs and so all sales were actually processed via mail-order.

3. While that idea sounded good to corporate types, the fact is -- people want to walk into a store, plop down some cash, and walk out with a product. Telling them, gee thanks...now go home and wait...your order will be there in a couple of weeks... when many customers found out about that they simply left the store and ordered from Dell.

4. In-Fighting
5. You would not
6. believe the amount of in-fighting that the stores caused. Let's say an owner of a small business walks in to purchase 6 machines for his work....suddenly this sale is transferred to the SMB division, therefore no one from our store, including the manager - or even the store itself, got credit for the sale.

   As a result, there was ZERO personal incentive to help anyone representing a business, because we were just going to lose the account anyway.

   Haha. Imagine a computer store not interested in helping the biggest purchasers of their product.

No surprise really why Gateway is having trouble...they are barely controlled chaos....

A quality match.

[Gr8Apes]

What Gateway needs more than anything else is a QA dept, and not another low-bid business. Over a 4-5 year period from 92-97, their computers went from predictable usable machines to absolute and utterly complete crap. I call it the low-bid phenomenom. Initially, they started low-bidding parts, so that if you palced an order for 20, or even 5 PCs, you had about 90% chance of getting at least 3 different configurations even if you ordered the exact same PC. (namely - different motherboard and memory manufacturers, other peripherals as well though). This lost them lots of business. Then they "dropped" the continuous low-bid philosphy, going for long-term low-bid contracts. yeah. Then we got the infamous 1 in 2 Viewsonic monitors and power supplies dying.

After going through about 2000 monitors, we stopped buying Gateway, forever, as the quality never has been rated anywhere equal to Dell. (Why'd we buy 4000 systems, very large organization, with large upgrade needs at the time, and they were an approved vendor with the best price. For some mysterious reason, after all the problems, everyone seemed to favor Dell for their next upgrade purchase. out of 500 machines ordered in the next year, we had 2 bad hard drives, and 1 bad keyboard.)

Having excellent customer service just doesn't compete with not needing customer service at all.

Re:A quality match.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

My gateway is very good. If you have not checked them out recently, check again. Since about 2000, thier machines have been doing very well. Not had a issue with any I have encountered.

Re:A quality match.

[Gr8Apes]

Ahh, but it follows the burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me adage. Gateway has lost my business until one of two things happen: Dell screws up, or Gateway winds up with something compelling to make me change. (BTW, since I now build my own machines entirely from scratch at about 50-70% of a Dell, I don't buy those personally anymore either. But I highly recommend Dell for business reasons, but again, specific models only.)

I'm happy your machine is fine. From my experience, that means you got the 1 in 4 machines that are largely problem-free. I have 0 desire to risk it again when there's no compelling reason to take that risk, or, in case of business, get major egg on face.

Re:A quality match.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I have used over the last 4 years about 10 different gateway machines (soem mine, some not) with no issues. I have NOT heard of alot of people having issues with Gateway. Making a business decision on a burn me once shame on me burn me twice shame on you deal is just as dumb as never looking at anyone else but Dell. SHOW ME THE FAILURE numbers then I will not buy. Show me anecdotal evidence and I will take it with a large grain of salt. I DON'T here from a large amount of Gateway users (except geeks) about failures. This is so unlike buzz I heard about Packard Bell. EVERYONE...and I do mean eveyrone....even the people trying to sell them thought they were pure crap. Strange I don't hear this from anyone but geeks.

I use to service them.

[nlinecomputers]

I use to work for a company that did service work for equant, warantech, banctec, etc. We did the warranty repairs on a lot of e-machines. When they first came out the were junk. Best Buy finally dropped the line because of a 20% return rate. They are back in Best Buy now and they are doing much better. Worth a second look if your looking at a cheap computer.

So, will the m6807 come back?

[Rinikusu]

eMachines did the "unthinkable" by releasing an actual kick-ass desktop replacement laptop in the m6805 and m6807 series. Both sport Athlon64's. Unfortunately, since news of the Gateway acquisition, finding the m6807 (which comes with a DVD+/-R) has been an exercise in futility. The eMachines site lists the m6807, but clicking "buy now" gets a "there are no online resellers of this product" message. Circuit City is out. Best Buy never seems to have gotten any, although you can find the m6805 at both.

So, Gateway, eMachines had a great laptop there, don't fuck it up.

eMachine bashing

[vasqzr]

Other than the power supplies going out, there's not much wrong with the eMachines. As a former Best Buy employee, some of my friends and I still have Linux on the first eMachines still chugging away in our dorms/basements.

They only had 2 PCI slots? 5400rpm drives? Integrated sound card?

They were only $299!!

What did you expect?

They basically created the sub-$1000 PC market. Remember what it was like before? PC, monitor, printer, you'd walk out of the store with a $2900 dent in your VISA, and all you'd have to show for it would be an IBM Aptiva or a Packard Bell.

You could buy an eMachines for $299, get a monitor and inkjet and a copy of Deer Hunter, and you still have money to buy the kids christmas presents. We'd have people drive from 80 miles away coming to buy the new cheap computers.

Whos on top

[DanArgent]

Clearly, Gateway, a bad computer company is buying up an even worse one. My question is, who is the best? If one had to rate all the companies like IBM Dell and HP in order, how would the list go?

Re:Whos on top

[Anonymous Coward]

SONY
IBM
DELL
HP
EMACHINES
GATEWAY

Re:Whos on top

[Goeland86]

wrong : SONY=best tech stuff, but expensive HP=good wide distribution & support, relatively cheap EMACHINES=extreme power IBM=good linux support & good machines can be used for servers DELL=GATEWAY= crap, don't even think about linux on those boxes, nor of upgrading or replacing anything. if you need to buy another card, it's cheaper to buy another box.

Love Gateway Computers

[foo fighter]

We have used Gateway systems at our company for the past five years.

The past two years have been excellent with them. If you order a hundred systems, they'll be identical so you can image and deploy them easily. They have inexpensive long-term warranties and tech-support that will help you out when you have a complex problem. I've had them send me a better monitor when one of theirs burned out. It was there the next day, even before I'd packed up the old one to ship back.

Their cases are nice to work in now. Completely toolless to install cards and drives. The edges are rounded so no more coming out of an upgrade missing a finger tip.

We even have a few Gateway servers now and we've been very happy with them. Absolutely no problems.

I've always liked their laptops better than Dell, Compaq, HP, or Toshiba.

Yes, the first three years they weren't very fun to work with. You'd order a hundred and you'd get three different video cards, four different network cards, different motherboards, in any given machine. That's a huge pain in the ass when you are trying to image and deploy those in a corporate environment.

Don't even get me started on their "if you open the case or install any software you've voided the warranty" bullshit during those few years.

But that's turned around. They are a good computer company, and an antidote to the Dell hegemony in the PC world.

Wahooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can get all my shitbox PCs from one source.

Re:Wahooo!

[troutfisher]

LOL

No complaints about Gareway from me

[jht]

At my old company, I switched from Dell (bad support problems) to Gateway back in 2000. I bought their systems for the next couple of years, until forced into Compaq/HP by our corporate parent - but in my experience I was getting better quality systems in the old Gateway E-series desktops for less money than the Compaqs were costing. And when I or one of my techs called Gateway, we got to talk to a human who'd actually not make us go through all the clueless support hoops that a Dell or HP would. If we diagnosed a problem, the Gateway tech would actually believe us and send the part (if we needed it) withough giving us a line of BS.

And they'd also send us a real live sales rep who'd come to visit us a few times a year and show us the actual roadmap, so we could forecast our ordering appropriately. Dell and Compaq wouldn't bother doing that for us because we weren't big enough to justify actual face time (we had about 150+ users).

Nowadays, though, as I mentioned above what's left of my old company is living La Vida HP, reliability problems and all. And I've got my own place now, and I used Dell systems to set up my training lab (even though I can't stand 'em), because I just couldn't pass up the $150/box I was saving over the equivalent Gateway. Bummer. But that's the market position Gateway's been in. The big companies don't take them seriously versus Dell, HP, and IBM, and the little price-conscious companies can't afford them. At least eMachines helps them in the price-fixated marketplace.

This Is Depressing

[theManInTheYellowHat]

I was amazed that eMachines had become #3 maker and they had done it with out going public. I was also amazed when they made the 1st 64 bit notebook.

Sure they make el-cheapo computers, sure there are going to be quality issues at the bottom of the barrel. But these guys did get very far since 1998 and then to get bought out by Gateway.... That is depressing. Why couldn't some one cool like penguin computing buy them?

Maybe one of those 64 bit notebooks will become a collectors item?

Re:So, will the m6807 come back?

[laddhebert]

I searched the world for the m6907. I really wanted that DVD burner. What sucked even more was Circuit City looked like it was the only store to carry that particular model and they had it on their website marked at the same price that the m6805 was. I called serveral in town and finally learned that the stores I called never even had that model and most likely will never get that model because of the Gateway buy. I ended up with the m6805, which is exactly the same machine, except no DVD burner, just a CD burner. I'm cool with that. It is pretty much a desktop replacement - fast cpu, NICE video card, BIG screen , and Linux runs great on it - with the exception of the built in broadcom wifi card. I have pcmcia wifi cards that I would rather use anyway.

I have a feeling that once these things are gone, they are not going to be coming back for a while.

Oh, and get this. I only paid $1349 for the beast. Beat that.

-L

Re:So, will the m6807 come back?

[Rinikusu]

I know.. and Best Buy had a $250 MIB awhile back, too. DAMMIT. Now, the question is, do I really want a DVDR or can I do without? (Doing without now on the desktop)

That bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Gateway Crap? Did they ruin ALR? I have had a lot of experience with Gateway. Lets face it, most of Gateways product is for the most part straight off the shelf Intel with a "non-complimentary" copy of Windows, weather you like it or not. I would much rather build my own. Flame them all you want, the competition isn't much better. Did Dell ship out over 1000 bad laptops to the Pentagon after 911? Whoops. Did Gateway ship drivers that took out their monitors? Whoops. Damm good monitor too, I still have one. Has any company ever have a perfect tech support or perfect product shipment history? They are not made for the likes of you. They are made for the typical consumer. Oh yea. and restoration CD's I'd hate to tell you this but it's always a lot easier to just load windows from the windows CD, and load the drivers later. But some people just get pretty darn used to having other people doing things for them. Yes one of those CD's was a windows CD. Apart from the "removable Bezel" Gateway Hardware is the same as anyone else's. They would have a Billion in the bank if the re-tooled floppy holes! Gateway didn't ruin ALR. People at ALR thought that Gateway was this all powerful company, that would take them to the next level. Gateway needed ALR to take them to where they were. ALR should have bought Gateway, because ALR knew the business/channel market. Why did Gateway buy E-Machines? Retail space. Gateway CE in Best buy what else. It aint rocket science.

Re:That bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

i work for gateway (sort of). lets just say, never ever ever would i buy a gateway comp. i've seen them build p4 systems with a 90 watt power supply.

they def put all the cheapest parts in their computers to save money. yep, gateway sucks.

AMDeez Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow they paid $250 million over what they should have.

A-bloody-men!

[RatBastard]

I worked for a company that used Gateways exclusively. Why? Becuase the boss bought one and wanted her work computer to be exactly the same as her home computer. They were terrible. Over-priced hunks of crap. We had more problems with them than I care to remember.

And then there was that one E-Machine we bought as a PC-based FAX center. What a disaster that was!

Check out the new HP zv5000z Athlon 64 notebook

[Brian Stretch]

HP's new zv5000z Athlon 64 desktop replacement notebook is similar to the eMachines M6805, but you can get a higher-resolution widescreen, Bluetooth, a 12-cell battery, and assorted other goodies. You can't get a DVD burner (just a DVD-ROM/CD-RW), and HDs are only 4200RPM, but it has a midrange nVidia graphics chip that should be far better supported under Linux than the high-end ATI chip eMachines uses. Go to Best Buy (store, they're not on the website), do the build-to-order thing, and they'll give you a $150 rebate on top of HP's $100 rebate thru Saturday. There will be prebuilt models in the stores in a month or two. The price is near or BETTER than eMachines.

See HP.com for the usual propaganda.

Re:Check out the new HP zv5000z Athlon 64 notebook

[Rinikusu]

Unfortunately, for my uses (3D content creation, gaming, etc), I rather require the higher end ATI card. And, not being a regular Linux user anymore, driver support under Linux is no longer an issue for me, either. Also, there's no DVDR option and their extended warranty is $299 for 3 years (eMachines is $189, but BestBuy will "pricematch" it). It looks to be a decent machine, but a step backwards, IMO.

Strategic Destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone at Gateway heard from Baystar lately? Anyone at Baystar heard from Intel lately?

This is good for business

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good for business. Now the crappiest PC OEM is even bigger.