Gateway Computers: A Gateway To The ScrapYard
Oct 07 '00
After writing my review of my Gateway 450 which I use for work, you may assume that because of that review that I endorse Gateway computers for purchase. Let me assure you that is not the case.
Currently we have about 200 plus Gateway computers installed in our company. Most of these computers are Pentium 233 which are about two years old. Shortly after the year warrant ran out on the computers, we started to have major problems with them.
These problems included mostly CDROM failures but did include many hard disk crashes. In addition, there were several network card failures such as the one that I described in my review of my Gateway 450 Deluxe.
Because of the critical operations required in our business we need to have a high reliability factor. To have computers fail would cause warrants on criminals to go unissued and cause security risks to the community at large. However, our Gateway computers are notorious for having major failure problems at critical time period. There was no warning of impending failure of components; the components just failed.
Another issue which our organization has with Gateway is that they have not followed our specifications when designing these desktops. We asked that a specific network card be placed within these PCs and they did not follow that spec in many instances. This caused us to have to be able to configure multiple network card configurations which is time consuming and requires additional paperwork to keep our inventory organized as to who has what kind of card in their computer so that when there is a problem we know what kind of card they have.
Currently we have sent at least ten of our 200 plus computers to surplus after scavenging them for replacement parts in emergency repair situations. In my former corporation we also had to do this, but with that I assumed that it was because those computers were IBM clones. Somehow I felt though that Gateway would be different in their reliability factor, but I see that overall they are not.
For those computers which were under warranty, the repair time and replacement time was poor. After attempting to replace the network card in my Gateway 450, the serviceman shorted out my motherboard and I was without a computer in my office for about four days.
Overall, I have to say that I feel that our experience with Gateway has been one of sheer hell. I have never seen such unpredictable mass failure of components in my life nor unreliable service.
Because of all of these reasons, we are attempting to change our contract to another vendor, hopefully Compaq for our next computer orders. We have had it with Gateway's unpredictable nature and do not which to do business with them any longer.
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