When my locally made computer died for the tenth time, my dad and I decided it was time for a new computer. Because my parents computer at home is a Gateway that held up well, we decided to go with the brand we trusted.

The computer was ordered by my dad back at home, and shipped to me at my college. The computer came well packaged in three boxes, and the shipping time was pretty quick - got there faster than they said it would be! I set it up there in my dorm room (which was VERY easy due to their color coding system for those spots that look like the same thing, like the modem hook-up versus the network hook-up), and got it to run nicely.

I went through the install, and then I had to go to class. When I came back, my computer had frozen up on the blank screen. I tried moving the mouse and then pressing control, alt, delete at the same time, but nothing worked. I finally had to unplug it and reboot - not good for the computer.

After dealing with this several times, I decided to watch and see what happened. When the power save came on, that's when the computer froze up. So I decided to call tech support to get this fixed. I have my computer on all day, and can not have the thing freezing up on me every time I was gone for an extended period of time!

I called tech support, and the guy was nice. I felt like I was being treated like a dumb female, but I knew that he had to take me step by step ("Press the start button at the lower left corner of your screen. Now..."). The most helpful thing was that he gave me a number so that if I had to call later that evening (like I did) or the next day, they could call up my past call and see what had already been done to save time. Oh - he also helped me change my speaker settings as they had been preset incorrectly for the type of speakers I had purchased. That was an easy and painless process.

Instead of giving you the run through of what exactly happened, I'll just say I had to call 2 more times, and each tech guy helped me a little further. Apparently some people's computers fix on the first step while others take longer. I don't quite understand this, but they were very helpful and patient with me - a definite plus!

Now, about the computer. My computer came with a 17 1/2 inch monitor, a wheel mouse, 2 speakers (Boston speakers), a windows ME keyboard complete with 4 shortcut keys, and a tower that has a CD rom drive and a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive.

My computer came with Windows ME (millennium), which includes the basic programs like excel, power point, word, access, etc. Everything was easy to find, and easy to use with not too many adjustments that needed to be made from Windows '98. In fact, the only changes I have found so far are minor changes in the word format (like the automatic font size setting is 12 rather than 10) and there are more games (spider solitaire and interactive games). I have not had time with my classes yet to explore the other programs more in depth, but I really do not notice a huge difference. Very user friendly.

This computer is a great one; very up-to-date and easy to use. Also, I have had great help from the gateway technical support staff, which was a BIG plus. I highly recommend gateway, though this higher tech computer may not be what you need as there have not been a whole lot of differences.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): gift
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000