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Gateway To Close All Retail Stores
John Lazzaro writes "Looks like Gateway is throwing in the towel and closing all of its remaining retail stores, according to a Reuters/Yahoo! report." The story notes: "Gateway's stores, which will be closed on April 9, have long been criticized by analysts and investors as an expensive drag on cash flow because of lease costs and the difficulty of managing inventories", and goes on to suggest: "...with [the acquisition of] eMachines, Gateway doesn't necessarily need the added distribution channel the stores gave the company. In addition to selling Gateway's wares over the phone and via the Internet, eMachines PCs are sold at major retailers such as Best Buy."
Who needs April Fools when you've got capitalism?
Tee hee!
First funny story all day, because it's true!
They need the resources to open stores in India. All the people they're paying to do tech support need somewhere to buy computers.
April Fools! Ha ha ha! ...eliminate about 2,500 retail jobs...
Oh.
RTFpress release. This story's legit.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
EMachines never had any stores and did pretty well... I guess this is why they are merging with Gateway.
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
Back to the barn. Moo
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
If their decision to fire me last month had anything to do with this...
The Gateway Store was mainly a "showroom" environment because Gateway's main product is a made-to-order PC. Gateway could never get into a Best Buy or Circuit City environment because they didn't want to cheapen their customizable image by providing computers that would sit on shelves. Meanwhile, eMachines is the sit-on-the-shelf cheap PC that you can find at Best Buy and Circuit City along with discount environments such as Wal-Mart.
Shutting down the stores is more or less a nod to the retail chains that they can have eMachines all to themselves, and there's no danger of having to compete with eMachines coming out of a Gateway Country store. Even if those eMachines PCs had a "Gateway" sticker on them, it'd still be just as bad to the retailers... they don't like suppliers who are trying to undercut them by operating their own retail stores.
This is one of the forces that limits Apple's distribution. Apple choses to sell mostly directly and therefore they aren't making much of a push to get themselves into major retail chains... Since Wal-Mart can't undercut Apple's prices, Wal-Mart's not particularly interested in having Apple.
So, there's a nice firm wall going up at Gateway. Made-to-order PCs will be ordered by phone or Internet and be stamped Gateway, mass-made machines will be in retail stores and called eMachines. Everybody should be happy...
Although Apple seems to be doing quite well in retail, Gateway was losing money hand-over fist. (Gee, think that could have anything to do with quality?)
My prediction: Either they merge with another company or they'll be out of business within two years.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Dell doesn't have any retail outlets, or even sell computers in the usual chains, so Gateway isn't necessarily doomed...
but I don't think Gateway's build-to-order system is as well running as Dell's.
When I asked them about Linux, or a machine without an O/S, I was told "Microsoft won't let us do that." Double Duh.
In short, it was about the most useless showroom experience I've had in a long time. Gateway will lose nothing by shutting these turkeys (cows?) down.
couldn't this have been posted tomorrow?
-a disgruntled gateway customer
Indeed, otherwise such stories - if false - might negetively affect Gateway's stock. Yahoo might be in for some A/F humour, but wouldn't chance a story of this type because of the possible legal repercussions.
What exactly could those stores accomplish that could not be done with a kiosk in a shopping mall (kind of like their biggest competitor)? Like the article said, they were simply a money drain and keeping inventory in the store kind of defeats the purpose of the build to order model. Now if only Dell would get out of the super-saturated consumer electronics market and we just might see Dell and Gateway going back to competing to build the best computers (wishful thinking, I know).
Their litigation has helped fight spam. Good Thing.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
no, just the droppings.
...the Gateway chain of supermarkets in the UK (i.e. that sell food n stuff, not computers).
Oh, you weren't.
HA HA HA HA Your fired!!! April Fools! NOT!!!!!
Here is the press release
This also proves that Slashdot is no longer a joke.
Oh....wait....
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
This is understandable, i suppose, as you can keep more profit without the overhead associated with brick n' mortar stores, but still, the stores had a use.
I remember trying to help my dad buy his next computer, and it really helped for me to be able to take him to the store and for him to physically see the computer he was going to buy. While large computer outfits can do this too, it was better, conceptually, for him to go to a store that only had one brand of computer, and they weren't all in the back next to shelves of accessories and idiot salesmen (like at CompUSA or Fry's.)
Especially for the over 45 crowd, adoption of internet-based sales can be a little discomforting. While i haven't a problem with it, Gateway's target audience just might.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
I imagine that part of the choice to close retail shops is the simple fact that you have to pay tax in states that you have a retail presence in. On a $400 pc, this could be easily $40.00 in taxes even if you mail order it. If you buy it local, that's great, but if you buy it via mail order, you get stuck with shipping and tax. This can really add up for those who buy their more premium solutions via mail order.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Dell has stores in about ten states.
. as px/kiosk?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
No idea if they're profitable though.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic
I had a client who would not switch to Dell or anyone else becuase there was a Gateway store near his house. I have HATED Gateway for years because of several bad experiences with them. Even after relating these to him, he would not switch his company to Dell because of that store. Well, I guess he just lost his reason.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Seriously, I used to check my email at Gateway stores all the time. Now it's going to be hard to find a place. Try checking your email at a Radio Shack to see what I mean. They freak the moment you navigate off the Radio Shack website, screaming that they "hear about it" from the main office whenever this happens.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
This post modded interesting because...you didn't know something?
The closing isn't surprising at all. To sell at a store like this, you need to have a more attractive product. Gateway had the Profile, which was not a good product. It saved space, but it performed poorly, and was not designed to be easily maintained. It was similar to the iPaq in these respects, and neither succeeded. They failed to attract certain market segments that made the iMac popular, namely education.
Besides that, all they had were a bunch of run-of-the mill computers. Their company really did not have much vision. And when they made an interesting move (acquiring Amiga or saying that DRM is bad), they didn't follow through with it.
The future of Gateway looks pretty bleak. I think in this move they are probably looking to be acquired. They have never really got it. Trying to show vision, and then turning their back on that vision. Poor service, trying to undersell, not finding a customer base.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Could this further the argument that we focus more on price then on quality? Much like the argument of people upset ehir tech support is in places like India...
For it to be an April Fool's joke posted on Slashdot, it would also have to be funny .
Actually, I take that back.
True story.
People getting fired in an already bad economy isn't funny
One of the reasons I bought a Dell is that by not having retail outlets, there was an 8+% savings over same-priced Gateway models. With stores in-state, Gateway had to charge sales tax to ship here.
So is eMachines a separate-enough entity that Gateway no longer has a 'physical presence'?
Meanwhile, Dell has a kiosk at a local mall. I didn't get close enough to see if they were actually selling there. But I just checked at Dell, and now their site collects my state's tax.
Design for Use, not Construction!
You may recall that the Amiga's owners for almost a decade, Commodore, went spectacularly bankrupt. The Amiga was bought by ESCOM, who then went bankrupt. Then Gateway bought the Amiga, but sold it on before becoming bankrupt... is the Amiga's curse about to take another victim?
Does my bum look big in this?
i just called gateway store in Corona, CA.
Talked to some guy, and he said yea, theyre closing. Should have a big sale, but doesnt know when.
I'm gonna call back saturday and see..
hope i can score some cheap shit!
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Wasn't Gateway the first to offer the $3000 42-inch plasma TV? I know that the gateway store near my house has a couple of these suckers on display. If they're closing the store, maybe I can get a good deal on the display models...
*de-computers, runs to store....*
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
the country stores didn't really make sense in a lot of areas around the US, people look for computers at big stores like best buy or good guys, or look online. Gateway will now compete in both places(thanks to emachines), and not have to rent a bunch of storefronts to cater to only a few passer bys each day. Those stores required quite a few employees to operate, and didn't generate a lot of business, except in places like New York or Manhattan where those type of stores are popular.(I bet they will keep a few open there) They just trimmed the fat in my opinion and I think it was a good move
I can't tell on a lot of these stories which ones are April fools. At least there's no SCO story today, or none of us would have a clue. On second thought, could this whole thing just be Darl's joke? Maybe he closes the door every night and laughs himself to sleep, wondering how long he can keep saying these things without cracking up.
I think you're confusing cause and effect here. Apple chose to go direct precisely because their forays into big box retail had been so unsuccessful. BestBuy, Circuit City, Computer City, Office Max, Sears - Apple has tried them all. In every case Apple's products were marginalized by big-box salespeople who didn't know the first thing about Apple technology and had no interest in learning about it.
Apple's retail presence is far greater now that they control presentation of their products. They've selected marquee locations and they showcase Apple products "in the wild" so customers can play with Macs, digital video cameras, add-on devices, and so on.
Wal-Mart was founded on deep price discounting. Volume of sales for already established commodity products is their bread and butter. Wal-Mart is, as you pointed out, not interested in getting into a business where they can't undercut the competition. Apple is likewise uninterested in making a deal with Wal-Mart, because they'd rapidly lose control over the value of the Apple brand.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Hold on... Gateway still had stores open?
Yeah, I went into one and was suprised how bleak it was (a couple demo computers and one rack of accessories). They didn't have anything significant in stock, so I went up the street and bought what I needed from a white-box supplier. I really couldn't see what would motivate someone to buy from a Gateway store, because Gateway is hardly a brand like Sharper Image or something that sets them apart from every other PC company on the planet.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
So is eMachines a separate-enough entity that Gateway no longer has a 'physical presence'?
Actually, eMachines won't have the physical presence. At all. The eMachines name is going to be swallowed up, and now retailers (Best Buy, CompUSA) are going to now sell 'Gateway' instead of 'eMachines'.
That takes care of the store, what about the tech side of the issue? These retailers already have them in house. Done deal.
While in the beginning their equipment was beyond dismal ( anyone remember the melting laptops from about 15 years ago?? )..
They have steadily improved this over the years to where they are now a viable business choice.
Gateway hasn't done this...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Jolly Ho! who needs gateway and worst of all e-boxes. My wost computer was a gateway. Every I pray that Gateway goes out of Bussiness. And it looks like they are takeing there first step towards it. Keith
You know, I remember when the first Gateway store opened around here, and it was a big event! People flocked from miles around to gape at the amazingly fast new home computers running Windows 98. They even had a real cow outside of the store to comemorate it--no really! People thought Gateway was cool back then, but now...well, maybe it's for the best!
...will disgruntled customers take their lemon Gateway PCs to smash them?
~Philly
- "Oh, forget the cable, I was really looking for a laptop like that one, can I see? Oooh. Nice. Ah. Color? Neat. Hmmm. Say I could use something like that -- say how's the screen in bright light, I notice that it's rather dark in here."
What we had there was a failure to communicate.It's great -- how do you spell your mother's maiden name?
"Could we remove it from the shackle for a minute and take it near the window to get an idea?"
Sorry, we're not allowed to do that -- its against our security policy. Do you rent or own?
"No, no, I don't want to take it OUTSIDE, just over near the, er, tinted *sigh* window to get an idea how...
"Will you want a printer with your purchase?"
So, good bye Gateway Stores -- you sucked and we're better off without you.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Gateway is trying to diversify into consumer electronics: Televisions, MP3 players, and so forth. This seems like a good idea to me, since competing with Dell on PCs is difficult.
After the Gateway stores close down, how will they peddle their consumer electronics? Unlike PCs, customers want to see and hear these products perform.
If this were Apple closing all it stores it would be a gloom and doom story of how the death of Apple is near.
While Gateway who has been losing money as fast as Donald Trump is losing hair gets a positive spin on their story.
How about a little bit of the truth in the article! It would be nice to read how Gateway is teetering on the brink and about how Dell has beat them to within an inch of their lives. Gateway would have a hard time giving its computers away!
Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Gateway knows things we don't about how to plug in a PCI card or install a HDD.
They failed to underestimate the "I want it now" of customers. If they want to wait, they will order online for a few dollars less.
It would have worked if they had put a single, well-trained tech in every store to "customize" your box (the computer you pervs), and boom, you're out the door with a custom Gateway PC in 15 minutes. If you want a burn-in, pick it up tommorrow.
Or is a factory-built PC somehow special (having been in a few assembly plants, don't count on better, necessarily.)
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
If they were letting you go because they were shutting down operations they would have told you. The reason they gave you was the real reason. If they didn't give you any reason then they probably know something you think they don't know but don't want to start a major issue by confronting the specific issue. And this isn't it. In Arizona it's a right to work state so if the company suspects something about you but can't prove it they can simply fire you without giving a reason.
"If their decision to fire me"
The key word is "fired." They may have been trying to avoid paying you a severence package by not laying you off. But they'd be firing more people than you if that was the case. And the fact it was so long prior to the closing of the doors would indicate you were fired because of you. Instead of trying to look for alterior motives you'd be better off addressing the real issues that resulted in you being fired so you can work on those areas for future jobs.
I worked as a tech for HP and we had the heads up that our call center was getting shut down. There were people who decided to "go out blazing" and were promptly escorted to the door. They assured us for weeks they'd be nice and not just shut the doors on us. A few weeks later we all showed up to find the doors locked and the security guards telling us we'd get our checks in the mail.
The point is, they let us all work until the last day despite most of us playing games the whole time since the call volume was so low.
The odds are very high that you screwed up. Companies know that companies don't like to hire people who have a history of being fired. If they fired you because the store was closing they needlessly hurt your work record. And it's very doubtful that a big company like Gateway would do something like that to one of their employees. Companies don't fire people unless they have a real good reason because it can bite them in the ass. And firing someone because the shop is closing down isn't a good reason.
So yeah, I'm going to say it had nothing to do with the store closing.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I doubt that, if anything the eMachines line will remain in the low-cost area with Gateway labeling taking the high-end side, or having Gateway do the customized machines and eMachines offer their typical 4-Desktop variety
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
At what point do Gateway become Beleagured?
They've been described as being Troubled for a while and I was wondering if there's a scale of adjectives that journalists use to describe how deep in shit a company is.
If I remember rightly Apple went straight to Beleagured status almost overnight, and stayed that way for around five years!
Gateway was reselling CPU time on the PCs showroom PCs in all of their stores for companies to use as a private computing grid. So what happens to the grid? Do they just put all of the PCs that were in the stores in a warehouse and run the grid there? They just signed a new customer a few weeks ago.
i surf at -1 while moderating, and dive deeper when intrigued. but +3 keeps the idiot factor down for normal browsing.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
This must come as shocking and horrible news to all Slashdot readers. This totally ruins my plans (And yours too probably) of going to the Gateway store and buying a wonderful computer.
_________ Help me get a PSP!
Was it a year or a year and a half ago? At any rate one of my buddies was a manager at a Gateway Country store. I can remember him talking about days going buy with next to no one comming in the store and being "forced" to play games all day. When his store was closed in the first wave he and a bunch of the other ex-gateway employee banded togather to form a new store - where they play games all day.
/.ers near a closing Gateway check it out. If not for the tech they had some great office stuff.
Also something to note: THE LAST WAVE OF CLOSINGS HAD GREAT GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALES. Any
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
Mainstream news is picking this story up as well. One of the news television channels my dad watches was just showing this on its ticker.
Before I saw that, I assumed this was BS as well.
Just because they didn't charge you the sale tax for your state doesn't mean you don't have to pay it.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
IMHO, Gateway's retail stores were doomed from the get go. Perhaps the target customer for the stores was someone who, unlike me, wouldn't otherwise go to Gateway's web site, but for me I found the stores to be next to useless. Why?
Well, at least when I went in a few years ago, you could not actually buy a computer from the store, per se. They would order one on your behalf, to be shipped to your house - in other words, exactly what would happen if you simply ordered the computer from their web site, complete with the shipping charge and the accompanying delay in getting your computer. In fact, I think if you elected to order one, the salesman would literally log in to the same Gateway web site that everone has access to and enter your information for you.
All the stores amounted to, then, was a place to see the hardware and use it hands on before you made a purchase - in other words, not really that useful at all.
Apple stores, on the other hand, will probably be successful in the long run, I suspect. Why? Well, first, at least in my area, they seem to actually have selected good locations, where there is a lot of foot traffic, and they always seem to be crowded. Second, you can buy pretty much anything you see in the store, on demand. Third, the Apple brand and their reputation, to go along with the fact that to the average consumer, Apple's products look and feel cool and hip, not like the boxy PCs sold by Dell and Gateway.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Rather than lease a big retail space, I see Dell popping up all over the malls in those little kiosks. Minimal overhead, a physical local retail presence, and the kiosks are right in the middle of the walking traffic so everyone sees all the cool stuff going on.
Is there anyone here who has purchased a computer from a Gateway retail store?? I've seen them but never even been inside one.
Apple stores OTOH are dead sexy. I always take a detour through the apple store when I get a chance... and I don't even own a Mac!
A Gateway store though just sounds.....blah.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The truth of the matter is that e-machines acquired gateway - and got PAID to do so. Don't believe me? Here's the story - pieced together from articles from PR from the last couple of months.
...Of the 17 people reporting to the Waitt, 15 were out right fired and replaced with e-machines leadership. The remaining three (including the CFO) were demoted in title.
About 12 months ago Gateway Founder and CEO Ted Waitt ran into a man named Wayne Inouye, CEO of e-machines at a trade show. At the time GTW was trading at $3.50 - below cash value of the company. Inouye was interested in doing a leveraged buy out. The combined force of e-machines (4th largest computer manufacturer at the time) and Gateway (3rd largest) would have made a powerful combo. But for whatever reasons the stars did not align. Fast forward 12 months later. Gateway announces that it will "purchase" e-machines for $235MM in cash and stock. Inouye was named CEO and Ted became chairman of the board of the new company. Last Friday is when the axes fell
In my opinion there is more to come -- you see e-Machines is a 138 person company with revenue of (get this) $1.1 Billion. The 7000 people at gateway pull in under 3 Billion. I don't have a business degree or nothin' but it sounds like e-machines is a much leaner meaner company, which - given the new leadership structure - is exactly what gateway will become.
Remember when Gateway wasn't just Gateway? It was "Gateway 2000". I don't know what the 2000 meant.
It sure used to sound cool though. I remember in about 1994, someone else in one of my high school classes had just bought a computer. We asked him what kind it was. Without saying any of the specs, he replied "it's a Gateway 2000" and we were all like "Woaaahhh!".
When did they drop the "2000" part of the name? Anyone remember?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
As crappy as Gateway PC's might be, they can never surpass the Packard Bell (Packard Hell) for overall shittiness. Packard Bell's have to be the absolute shittiest x86 PC's ever sold. Wow... what trash they were. Every piece, every component reeked of cheapness and trash.
They don't still make PC's do they? If not, anyone remember when they stopped?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
if you search for "Gateway 2000" at images.google.com you get a bunch of results that have nothing to do with computers such as This and This and even This!.
That's sad when they don't have brand recognition even in a search engine.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
A client of mine brought in their Gateway PC to a Gateway Country store for a nonresponsive keyboard issue. The tech ignored my client's request to have the data backed up, blithely ran the system recovery CDs and of course, didn't fix the problem. A LOT of computer stores and repair shops hide their sloppy work behind "we're not responsible for your data" signs, which is pretty sick, since it's often the data that's the most valuable thing on the machine.
You probably mean protected instead of "enhanced" and real instead of "protected".
The 386 added "protected mode". x86 CPUs all start out in "real mode" where they act like they're an 8086 (for compatability reasons). In order to switch into protected mode you have to set a flag (bit 0) in the cr0 register (It's a little more complicated than that because you have to prepare the system for protected mode first by setting up some tables for the MMU, and after setting cr0 you still have to do a long jump to flush the instruction pipeline).
Though I'm not sure that the a20 line is strictly necessary for protected mode. Rather I think that either windows gave you a pretty error message and halted, or it didn't notice that it wasn't working and decided to use memory that it couldn't access and ended up trashing it's own data (this could potentially cause a triple fault in protected mode and thats....kind of bad...). But as far as I know the the machine would be able to enter protected mode perfectly fine -- but most bootloaders wouldn't get that far as they like to use memory for things like operating systems and such, and protected mode takes lots of memory for tables so they might want more than 1 MB so they can load the OS in higher memory (I think the Linux Kernel loads itself at 2 MB but I'd have to check).
FYI: If the a20 line is disabled memory is aliased in megabyte-sized pairs, so if you try to use them you end up reading and writing to the previous megabyte of memory instead -- a very robust operating system would detect this and just not use the odd megabytes (I don't think Linux does this though...) or maybe just panic and display an error message (Linux and Windows probably do this). Of course when I write a bootloader, I always just assume that it worked =D..
Try that in Best Buy, and you'll just get the usual dumbfounded looks.
I think it would be a good idea for Gateway to franchise out their existing base of Country Stores. That way they could turn a liability into an asset, moving the control of inventory, property, etc. to the franchisees yet still getting a slice of the pie.
If gateway gives some freedom to franchisees, they could become very competitive in the PC service area, offering cheap rates(i.e. flat rates). This is a niche yet to be filled, IMO. There are thousands of home users(and small businesses) with out of warranty PC's that need caring. People want to do it cheaply. End of story.
-D
If Gateway's quality will drop to e-machines level. I have worked or at least attempted to on several e-machines. They have to be the worst things on the market. The cheapest(not least expensive but cheap) components, with real strange configurations. Hell they don't even weigh enough to make a good canoe anchor, so what use are they?
Then again, Gateway might raise the level which would be good.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I are they the things that tried to look like apples but were pc's? becuase they are farked.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In Redundant Slashdot, Fools Capitalize YOU!
----
Well, if you think about "you" in the UCASE sense...
I have a feeling Apple will capitalize on this recent news and claim some of those now empty buildings for themselves.
I think I may just swing by my local Gateway Country store and see if there any 'open box' values to be had. I suggest you do the same!
I worked for a software company in California, and I was asked to purchase a PC for an emergency programming job. Our usual supplier took over a week to get a PC, and I remembered seeing the Gateway store on my way to work.
Thinking the Gateway might be a cut above the HP Pavilion or something I would get at Best Buy I drove over there. There were about 3 people looking at computers -- one was getting a demo of something by a sales person -- a pretty empty store.
It took me 3 minutes to walk around and peruse the various models, and then 10 more to get a sales rep to talk to me.
I pointed at a PC and told him I wanted to get one and asked for a price. When he told me it would take a week to get the PC, I was floored.
"You don't have any computers to sell here???"
"No."
"What's in all these cow-boxes you have along the windows?"
"They're empty."
"So what do you sell here?"
"Well, you can order one here. The store is so that customers can come in and try the machines out and match their needs to the PC."
"But I can order one from home with a couple of mouse-clicks!"
He didn't have much of an answer for that. I drove on to Best Buy and got the Pavilion.
I remember thinking that GW was crazy to open all these stores just so people could look and touch (but not take!) the machines. Expensive real-estate too -- all the stores I saw were in very high-rent areas.
Maybe Inouye can keep Waitt's expensive schemes in check and keep the company afloat....
I don't understand people who think this is April Fool's. I mean come on, I think EVERYONE but Gateway has seen this comming. When I first heard about them opening up the stores I rolled my eyes, knowing this day would come. It's like they just couldn't bring themselves to use what was working for their main competitor, Dell. Instead of doing what Dell did, which was to keep operating costs and shelf life to an absolute bare minimum, they go the exact OPPOSITE route and open up a huge chain of stores. Generally, doing the exact opposite of what is working very well for your top competitor is a bad idea...
No, Apple wants good locations for their stores.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
have long been criticized by analysts and investors as an expensive drag on cash flow because of lease costs and the difficulty of managing inventories
According to analysts and investors, "it would be so much easier to make money if we didn't have to build stuff, sell stuff and pay people."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Come again? What inventory? The only thing you could do at Gateway Stores was ordering your PC anyway. They only had some sample PCs to show off. Then again: Since when do have analysts the slightest clue about what they are talking ...
cragen
6 years ago when PCs were much more expensive and I was on a junior programmer's salary I struggled to buy one of their machines.
While the sale was being made they treated me perfectly.
However, later, long after the sale, when I sought help in buying components( possibly from *Gateway* ) to add their PC their response was patently flippant.....on several occasions.
I vowed right then never to buy another Gateway PC......I haven't.....and I will not.
If I had spent that kind of money on anyother product that companies salesperson would have treated me much better, especially if I wanted to buy more things from their company.
Losers.
Steve
Tell me that!
Distribution channels at retail without a lot of work. Large retail outlets like Costco. I suspect that Costco sells a lot of PCs. I don't know what E-Machines profitibility of late, but they started with a very lean infrastructure. Few people --the ceo/founder, a secretary and about 17 sales people-- and contract builds by KDS and ??? in Korea with drop shipping to the retail outlet directly.
Gateway could use some cash management skills and a method of being profitable. Retail is likely the only way in the near future they are going to get it since Dell, Tiger, IBM and HP aren't going way any time soon and seem much better run. The E-Machines model gives them that.
I'd say this is a hell of a lot better move than when NEC mergered with Packard Bell. That still makes me shudder.
The things you mention are basically correct, but they really only apply to modern systems. All this A20 gate keyboard controller stuff dates back to when the first AT systems appeared. Also I believe the terminology for the various modes of Windows is 'correct' ie what Microsoft called it back then, but maybe I remember wrong so many years later...
So what was the deal. Addressing changed a great deal when the 286 came out. In summarized form, essentially you had 24 bit addressing instead of 20 bit addressing. But take an address XT of 0x10ffef (chosen because this was the same as FFFF:FFFF) for example. But you say, "What!? 0x10ffef is more than 0x100000 and you said the XT had 20 bit addressing?" Exactly, that address of 0x10ffef would wrap to 0xffef. Well the 286 in real mode did not behave in such a manner. Why would this matter, well really in 8086 you addressed 16 bits into one of four segments, ugh. So programmers used this wrap-around trick to get to two regions of memory far apart from one another without having to change ES or DS say.
Such a trick did not work on 286 real mode and it was actually used a lot, say to get to the ROM Bios Data Area to find out how much memory was installed on the system. When the AT was being developed they were using a new keyboard controller, the 8042, which had a spare pin on it. So the designers of the AT decided to put that between the processor and the memory. On the 8042 there was a gate the could be on or off, and depending on its state it would either let the memory see the A20 (address line 20 bit) as is from the processor or set it to zero. This was an ugly hack needless to say and when the first 386 systems were coming out there were various bugs in how some motherboards were made that prevented the memory from seeing the correct addreses through the keyboard controller that went unnoticed initially because no one was using protected mode yet.
Thanks to just how long we've been without jobs, many of us are now classified as "out of the workforce" (which is a large part of why unemployment is falling - people aren't getting jobs, they're fallint out of the workforce).
Two more weeks for me, and I won't be "unemployed" anymore.
I think we are looking at April Fools moderation.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have an emachines and it's a great machine!
Does anyone remember CompuAdd? They were a struggling mail order PC firm that opened stores all across the country.
Unlike Gateway they did stock a few machines but mostly they had to order them for you like Gateway.
When I first heard about Gateway opening stores I knew it was a big mistake. How could Gateway not learn from CompuAdd's failure? But that's exactly what happened.
Apples high margins may save them but don't be surprised if their stores are eventually closed. It's not a winning business model.
Man Holmes
I have a 4-5 year old Gateway Solo 2500 notebook. It came with 64MB of memory and a 6.4GB HDD. Nice back then.
;-) .
About a year or two ago, I added a 128MB SODIMM which helped a lot.
After using it for about a year after that, the original hard drive started to get bad sectors. 4-5 YEARS out of a 2.5" HDD! I thought it was pretty nice. The original was a Toshiba, so I bought another one; 40GB (it was $101 at newegg.com). Gateway's website says that the max HDD this notebook will accept is 30GB. This is probably true, since it locks up when trying to automatically detect the 40GB drive. So, I specified the parameters in the BIOS so that it recognizes 8.455GB, and install LILO (or the Windows loader) to the MBR, and the full drive is detected.
Well, when the drive arrived, I was very anxious to get it in my laptop. "Yay! 40GB! Imagine all the BitTorrenting I can do now!", I thought. Unfortunately, there is a little piece that goes between the motherboard and the drive that I broke when attaching it to the new drive, and I bent a bunch of pins out of whack and the machine wouldn't detect any drives.
I was prepared to pay $35-60 for a new sled for the drive which would be more than I needed (I only needed the little piece that goes on the drive) but would make my laptop work again. So, the next weekend, I went to the local Gateway store and explained my problem at the service desk. The guy went back and talked to a tech (who I wish I could have spoken with in the first place, but...) and eventually came back and said that the part was standard (I didn't know it at the time, but it's proprietary), but I had the serial number of the sled, which he took back. I waited around a bit and the tech eventually came back out with a sled.
"This is what your sled looks like, right?"
"Yeah, I guess." (I'd seen it before, but it was hard to remember exactly.)
"And this is the little piece you need?"
"Yep."
"Well, this is your lucky day. Normally we'd have to have a warehouse ship these over and it would be pretty costly."
"Mmhmm.."
*I reach for my wallet.*
"So, how much will this cost?"
"*Shrug*"
"!! Wow, thanks!"
So, I got the part for free. I didn't even expect them to be able to help me and they were able to do that and then some.
On the way out, my dad joked that he probably just took the other notebook out of the trash and gave me the part. He later joked that it was me who made them have to shut down their stores.
Anyway, that was my Gateway story. I actually found that local store rather helpful. I'm not sure what I would have done otherwise. Maybe they will outsource their local support to a more general company.
BTW, this comment typed with that very notebook. Still going strong with a nice new hard drive and a fresh installation of Slackware. And, I was surprised to find, it will even run Windows XP! But not for long, in my case
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
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