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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.'"
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.