I have had a Gateway machine for two years now and I am well pleased with its performance.
What I want to draw peoples attention to is Gateway's excellent aftersales support. I have, on a number of occassions, needed to get in touch with Gateway's technical support as the result of a number of technical problems. These "problems" have been a mixture of situations brought about by myself, like trying to use Norton System Works to "move" Microsoft Office from one small partician to a larger partician with more room, result...huge crash. The technicians at Gateways telephone help centre talked me through sorting out the mess.
On other occassions they have helped with the installation of hardware (A read writer, which we bought from Gateway. I don't think they would support the installation of rival hardware) or correcting hardware conflicts (the modem wasn't working properly when I first got the machine).
What prompted this review was my "rescue" yesterday after another major crash brought about by a conflict between Norton and the installation wizard for USB devices. As I was trying to install a new peripheral "Crashguard" (one of Norton's utilities) intercepted a crash (Why I'm not sure?)...huge crash...The CD drives and most of the other peripherals, except my Zip drive had vanished from the machine.
After two phone calls each lasting about three hours, I think, the machine is working again okay. The point I'm making here is that Gateway were willing to help sort out the mess caused by myself and software that they had not supplied after my warrantee had expired, indeed this is the second occassion they have helped me since it expired.
I would recommend Gateway to anyone, okay they probably aren't the cheapest, and not offering their machines with all manner of extras; but, the truth of the matter is that machines and their software (not to mention pilot error!) do have a habit of going wrong (I know this from the machines I use in the course of my work) and Gateway provide a very good backup service.
Its worth noting that for "simpler" problems there is an automated help facility at their web site (gateway.com) which is probably quicker than talking to someone if you don't need to.
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Jan 6th, 2001
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