Good Value But not Cheap (Gateway)

Name: Zooropa_Boy

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Product:	Gateway
Date:	10/07/02 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent Build Quality, Best customer support, Good Value

Disadvantages: But not cheap!

I bought my Gateway PC in 2000, its a 650Mhz AMD with decent graphics card and DVD and CD-RW drives. The reason i choose to buy with gateway was the relaxed feel of the show rooms and the non-pressuring staff who seemed to genuinly believe that their computers where good enough to sell themselves.

And to be fair they were right, I know a thing or 2 about computers and know a good deal when i see one, and in their show room I could see several. But it wasn't until i actually went to order the thing and they started asking me if I would like to customize the machine when i was really impressed.

Gateway will gladly upgrade the model you want to buy to meet all your needs for the cost of the difference between the current component and the one you want to upgrade to. Meaning that for just £30 i was able to upgrade from a 16mb graphics card to a 32mb one and for £80 they included the CD-RW drive and for an extra £90 they gave me a scanner and finally for £40 they gave me what is still a top of the range subwoofer and ultra stylish boston digital speakers.

(the prices might seem a bit much now, but at the time these were good deals)

Gateway PCs are renowned for their very high build quality and excellent customer support and good value, but this does not mean they are cheap. Mine set me back £1500, expensive yes, but worth it.


So 2 weeks later my PC was delivered directly to my door, setting it up was a doddle, the color co-ordinated ports were excellent and setting up windows 98 was a breeze. The software bundle was good with the only exception the DVD player.

Things went smoothy for one year until i decided to format the hard disk. My botched attempt resulted in seemly irrepairable damage to my graphics engine. And this is when i found out that gateway can fix almost anything over the phone. After about 45mins of complicated proceedures over the phone with a technicion whose first langugue definatly wasn&#
39;t english nearly all damage had been undone: speakers working again, drive letters back to normal and even windows was beaming in glorious 32bit true color. The only thing that remained was framerate problems with DVDs and games gateway suggested serveral solutions but none of them worked. Finally they recommended opening up the PC and removing and reseating the Graphics card. They told me to consult the manual and went through every step throughly, assuring me that if i did anything to damage any part of the computer they would accept responsibility and repair it onsite. Well i didn't break anything but even after this option the problem remained. 2 days later they sent someone out (not an actual gateway employee, a man from a 3rd party company) he proceeded to replace a £100 AGP card no questions asked and then checked to see if it solved the problem, it did.

Most of you are probably wondering what is the point of this story well its how i came to the solution that Gateway customer support is unrivaled, a once even broke a mouse and they sent me a new one, no questions asked.

If you are a first time PC buyer (thats nobody reading this then) or know someone who is, I really think you can't go wrong with gateway, they build fine machines and have superb customer support that is ideal for 1st time buyers. Their staff will explain everything as many times are you need and if anything goes wrong chances are they can fix it over their free phone number.
(just make sure you buy 3 year onsite warrenty, its definatly worth it and its only about £150)

But if you are a bit more experienced with computers gateway probably isn't for you namly due to their slightly high prices, Mesh or Dell would be the better options. But at all costs avoid Tiny and Time! unless your REALLY on a budget.

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