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Troubled Times at Gateway
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the future of Gateway in the light of the recent announcement of the departure of their CEO. The article revolves around the question: 'Will the sudden departure of Wayne Inouye and a slumping stock price leave the computer maker open to a buyout or takeover?'"
Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he were the CEO of Gateway:
"I'd butcher the cow and have a barbecque for the shareholders."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Can Wayne Inouye Save Gateway? ... Apparently not.
But uh. Gateways have always sucked.
That's because you don't remember Gateway before they went mega-commerical. Many of us remember Gateway as being the mail-order company that always built PCs to the highest specifications of technology and quality. When everyone else was shipping 2x CDRom drives, Gateway was shipping 4x. When everyone was shipping 4 megs of RAM, Gateway was shipping 16. When everyone else had non-existant technical support, Gateway had excellent service that got your problem taken care of right away.
THAT is the Gateway I remember. The Gateway of today is nothing more than some other megacorp abusing the namesake of a company who knew how to build computers.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Over the past 15-20 years I've known many Gateway customers. Tech-savvy users, grandmas, University departments, small businesses, all have one thing in common: every single person or group I've ever known to have bought a Gateway PC has had to call their tech support line about something.
How do I know this? After the first two or three, I started to ask: "How was their tech support?" They'd usually answer matter-of-factly, "Oh, they were great. There was this little problem, but they helped me fix it right away."
Sometimes they'd say no, and I'd ask, "Really? You're the first." Then they'd respond with "Oh, well, now that you mention it, there was this problem with the [memory, hard disk, keyboard, missing item, whatever], but they helped me fix it right away."
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
That's hardly true. Gateway's got the most innovative website I've ever seen. Rarely does navigating a site equate to taking a Mensa IQ test. Every other OEM has relatively easy support pages, but Gateway takes the high road, demanding that you improve yourself in order solve whatever problem you may have. Dell, Apple, etc... all represent a "dumbing down" user experience, while Gateway is helping us help ourselves. After all, the smarter we become using their site, the less we will have to use their site at all. This must be working, because after using the site to find drivers, I've given up and vow never to return.