Gateway - the Mac of PC's
Written: Jan 07 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: PC confidence, easy end to end experience, great gaming and web surfing, great for web design
Cons: Price
|
|
|
| ziprz's Full Review: Gateway Performance 500 |
Confidence is the most important part of buying a PC. Gateway's Performance 500 has instilled confidence since the day I bought it. Let people gripe about how they're paying too much for the Gateway name, or that Gateway's components aren't as good as X, Y, or Z vendor. This PC is great because buying a Gateway is like buying an Apple. As an owner of both, this is a really important trait.
The first thing I did was visit my local Gateway Country store where I could Ooh and Aah over the latest Gateway PC's and peripherals. I was sold at "Hello". The store is cool, the cows are cool, and these ugly grey pieces of machinery suddenly became friendly. Moooo!
OK so having brick and mortar shops may add 1 or 2 bucks to the cost of every Gateway, but it is worth it. I got to hear first hand that the standard Boston Acoustics Speakers that were to come with my new PC rocked the entire store. No need to get the speaker upgrade. Then I got to see the difference between the 17" regular monitor that came standard, and the gorgeous 19" Trinitron that I ended up with. Definitely worth the upgrade. Point being that there is something to be said for interacting with a PC before you buy it. The staff was helpful, and the buying experience was great.
When the PC arrived at home I really knew why I bought a Gateway. I turned on a PC that had a custom 9 GB SCSI hard drive for added speed, DVD, CD Burner, 16 MB Video Card, 256 MB of RAM...everything top of the line! Guess what, it worked! Everything was installed perfectly, all of the peripherals functioned. That is the ultimate confidence boost. You can't expect that out of some junky build-it-yourself outfit. The box had excellent setup instructions in it. Within minutes I was chillin' in front of my screamin' fast PC petting my little squishy cow they gave me.
What you get with a Gateway are the intangibles that make buying an owning an expensive PC worth it. An integrated help system excellent tech support, one of the prettier PC enclosures outside of the Macintosh that I've seen. Gateway designed everything; right down to the product registration card. They "Think Different" and I respect that. So if you've gotta have a PC, then you've gotta go with a Gateway.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: More than 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 9-12
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
ziprz
|
|
Member: Kris Rzepkowski
Location: Naperville, IL
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 8 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.