When a product is good I give it a favorable review (Canon Powershot G1), so I am not one of these people that just hates everything. It is just my family has had a horrible experience with Gateway.

For background, I purchased a PII 300 from a local computer guy four years ago and the system has yet to have an equipment failure. Yes, it is slow and my wife and I decided we wanted something with a little more pep.

So we saw a Gateway ad and thought we would try them out. We purchased a PIII 866, 256 ram, cd rom, 21" monitor, 30 gig HD.

It was not working out of the box.

The CD ROM drive didn't exist. For the next year the CD ROM drive would be the bane of this system's existence. In the end I was sent two new CD ROMs, reinstalled Windows 7 times and formatted the hard drive as many. The hard drive also crashed -- so at one point I had no hard drive OR CD ROM working. Overall the quality of the product has been very poor.

After asking Gateway numerous times for an extended warrantee -- afterall, most of the major parts in my system are new -- they denied my request. It isn't policy. So I am sure that in the next six months I will be purchasing a new CD ROM and hard drive -- if not a whole computer.

The people at technical support were understanding, but the product they were trying to support was horrible. I am not convinced that I will never buy another system from a big manufacturer.

So, while my PII continues to be a great, solid machine, I don't put anything important on my Gateway without making a backup. My Gateway experience has left a lot to be desired.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 3000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 801-900
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30