The new "Gateway Guarantee"

Supercell

I see on on the new Irish Gateway page (ie.gateway.com) this price promise thingy. I'm considering either buying a new pc or building my own and have been checking out mainly Dell's and Gateway's Irish websites for the easy option. Looking at both manufaturers websites it seems to be that both are in the main flogging the same stuff, what differentiates them is i suppose their support levals (or the the fact that the irish gateway site is now harder to find with this stupid address [what was wrong with www.gateway2000.ie ehh??]and is just pants in terms of support info compared to dells site...i really dont want to listen to stupid lobby music in a que to some call center when i can look it up at my own leisure on a website ) . My question, given that price is going to be matched or at least beaten by a few quid by Gateway compared, what would people go for here. BTW i'm going pentium not athlon before someone brings that up(have my reasons). In the past i've got systems from both companies and when something failed on either pc i was reasonably happy with the support i got. Anyone got recent experience with these companies that they feel should make a difference to a potential buyer?

chernobyl

i bought from gateway some years back and i will not repeat it.
you never hear Dell customers ***** though.

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Britany Spears Looking incredible

BNC

I've been in the IT business for quite a while now and in my time working in support on the road one thing I found with gateway is that if you go to one make of their machine you would nearly always find a differnet make of motherboard graphics card inside each one, basically there is no consistency with the parts that they use (I can be corrected on this as I haven't opened one in ages!)
How about looking at Compaq aswell. Dell machines are a good solid build and their support has come along way.

Whats your reasons for not going AMD?

Stonemason

Personaly i had a gateway many moons ago and to be honest i didnt realy have many problems with it.Having said that i never used there tech suport simply because i like a challenge .All in all though i would recomend you build yourself as this way you get the satisfaction of building it you become more intmate with your system and more likely to know whats wrong when things go tits up which will save you in phone bills later.If you live in the dub area you could do alot worse than have a word with Gerry from these very boards id say he can help you choose and get parts and possibly even help you build it for a fair price certainly better than either dell or gateway.


Stone

[This message has been edited by Stonemason (edited 15-06-2001).]

Supercell

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
i bought from gateway some years back and i will not repeat it.
you never hear Dell customers ***** though.

</font>

I noticed that too chernobyl, i just did a trawl through the dell and gateway "clone" newsgroup postings and noticed that in the main there does appear to be a lot more realy angry peopl with gateway than dell. That said i did notice too that the average Dell buyer appear to be more pc literate(see later why i think this) and the ranters all appear to be newbies that think they just bought a toaster, their reasons for rants are IMHO mostly caused because something simple failed and emotions took over before logic. Maybe its because Dell are perceived as a "business user" company as opposed to Gateway which markets itself as a "home user" company. I think this in the end is reflected by the amount of relative rants. To be honest, as i said earlier both of them essentially seem to ship the same pc's, and as someone who H_A_T_E_S having to call for support(why do people buy pcs when they dont want to learn how to use them???).... The only time i ever call them is when something fails and i've exausted every possible avenue i can go down and i want a replacement part. I understand that hard drives, cdroms blah blah fail and if i am too stupid to back up, and my hard drive clonks, then thats my own stupidity. I don't do rants.
I'm not slagging off Gateway owners, i just think that the main reason you see more Gateway rants than Dell ones is a result of good marketing thats all, as i said both appear to ship pretty much the same stuff.

BNC, i'm going pentium because i dabble in video capture and a LOT of graphical apps (not to mention sound) are pentium optimized and thats likely to continue. Also very few are p4 optimized yet (remember mmx?) but will be. Besides intel are cranking higher cpu speeds out(and the gap is getting bigger and bigger) and frankly for what i do thats all that matters, sheer brute force.
They are my reasons, i don't want to turn this into an athlon vs pentium debate.


[This message has been edited by Longfield (edited 15-06-2001).]

Mr Pussy

I own a Gateway.I bought it about 2 years ago and I thought it woz a great price to pay for what I got + after its 3 years old I can give Gateway back the 1 I bought off them 3 years ago and get some cash off my next PC
Problems..........well I did have a problem with the Voodoo 3000 graphics card that came with it but they just sent me out a new one at no cost which turned out 2 b a Voodoo 3500

Kegser

Having worked on hundreds of both make of machine; I must say that they're both much of a muchness.

I haven't had much dealings with Dell customer support; but being a Gateway owner I've dealt with GW support.. but I know what I'm doing and only rang them to order replacement parts etc.

The one thing I will say is that I see a lot of Dells that need fixx0ring up, but happily it's mostly software related problems, or "custom order" machines that begin to act the bollix.

Building your own machine or getting someone you know to do it is the best way in my opinion; much greater choice over the parts used.

Supercell

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Kegser:
I haven't had much dealings with Dell customer support; but being a Gateway owner I've dealt with GW support.. but I know what I'm doing and only rang them to order replacement parts etc.

</font>

For me thats the key issue, i never ever ring for software support, but as someone that has done tech support myself i do wonder about hardware replacements.There is a big difference between a poorly trained tech that asks 1 million stupid questions(after being presented with valid reasons why its dead) and another that says you've done my job for me, where do you want that part sent too? Thats a solid recommendation Kegser.

Kali

Hmm ive had two gateways, one a P166 i got moons ago and its worked perfect since... spilt some coffee on the keyboard about five months ago and after a quick call into their factory I came out with a new one without any receipts etc.. pretty nice of them I thought

Mixie

I own 4 Gateway systems, averaging one a year for the last 3 years. I also maintain 20 odd of them from schools, businesses etc. in my locality. I've never had a serious problem with them, and their tech support has always seen me through when necessary. I've found that returns etc. were ok, although they seem to be slipping nowadays...

All systems where I work are DELL. Nothing but problems with them and their aftersales support leaves a lot to be desired, at least in my experience.

I'm not saying ones better than the other, they're both equally as bad. Just build your own lol.

gandalf

Hmmm I used to work for Gateway Sales many moons ago. I would only recommend them to people who are PC literate, the main reason is that for a PC-illiterate person their After-Sales service is "ropey". They seem to go through periods of very good service, then alot of their techs leave when they realise they aren't all going to get promoted and the service level drops, I believe this is the same with Dell. As somebody said previously the other problem with Gateways is that one model of PC can have numerous different motherboards, memory types and other components, Dell on the other hand don't seem to have those sort of problems.

Gandalf.

Lump

I've bought from Dell many times, for other people not me, and I have found that they are most helpful. If you say that you are buying for a business (even made up) and that you are on a budget, they will go out of their way to try and fix you up with what you need, Thats my experience anyway. Although other people may not have gotten on so well.


John

TacT

In my own experience........Gateway - dodgy systems, unstable, ropey service.

Dell - solid systems, stable, good service.

just my tuppence

ConUladh

My work PC is a Dell, my home PC is a Dell and the PC I sorted out for a mother was a Dell, never had problems with any of them

Supported a number of Dell machines a few years ago, besides the queues (hate that) I found their support very helpful, but only if you knew what you were talking about

One guy was quite happy to have me trying out different things, ripping out bits and pieces while he was on the other end of the phone (in hindsight I was prob making s_hit of the warranty but anyway)

Another guy who came onsite insisted on explaining everything he was doing to solve the problem (I was new to the game)

So my dealings with Dell Support were a very good learning experience for me although I'd say I was prob lucky

Don't know an awful lot about Gateway, had heard they were dodgy in the past.

I knew of one guy who'd been sent the wrong size monitor with his PC, when he got on to them they sent him out a replacement but never reclaimed the original, that's the kind of service I like

[-FI-]Barra

i got me a dell a few months back and i am very pleased wit it,extremely good service and i got the pc quickly,,i also had a prob with me monitor and emailed it to there support peeps and got a reply 2 hours later
very helpful bunch of ppl
go for the dell

boot_sect

believe it or not i used to work for gateway's tech support? In the main gateway customers had a great advantage of Dellz for some years as dell customers had to pay for their tech support but alas for gateway customers the new guarantee is just as bad as dellz yeah? do your self a favor and buy from pc world ok? why? because if you call into tech support in gateway or dell
1. They want to make you call back as many times as possible as you are paying more and more each time you call yeah? hehe
2. Ergo long winded multiple call procedures become necessary (somehow? hehe) then yeah?

Hey also lots of tech support people in places like that like to format hard disks yeah? I mean some because it's tuesday and on tuesday's they like to format your hard disk right but others because they want to keep all calls to 15 minutes and get a bonus because of it yeah? Ergo buy one from pc world and if it breaks put it in the car and bring it back to them plonk it on the table and say fix this right now yeah? and preempt having to spend £30.00 an call listening to some fool telling you you have to format your hard disk so you will call back again and
again all the while making the company more and more money yeah?

www.limewire.com

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BOYCOTT E$$0

[This message has been edited by boot_sect (edited 17-06-2001).]

Lump

Yes, but with dell things rarely go wrong

Kix

I got a Gateway because they were one of the first to release an Athlon-based system in Ireland. I've been really happy with it and I've bought several for work - we need the floating-point perf. for number crunching. I've had no problem with mine. We had some occasionally minor problems with the ones at work - all which have been resolved quickly and without fuss.

The only Dell machine at work is an unstable bi-atch of a machine, as it happens, though I think Dell build quality is generally slightly better.

I think that with either you generally get a fairly well spec'ed machine for a decent price. Nothing spectacular but better than building your own for most buyers. I built my own before and I don't think that I got good value for my money, to be honest.

Gerry

I'd also say that dell are better, from a build quality and support perspective. Nobody has any complaints about the dell machines in college, they never crash. A friend of mine has bought gateway for years. I haven't been impressed by his last 2 machines. They have nice cases, which easier to upgrade than dell's. However, we had no end of trouble getting the old pII 233 to work after a reinstall.

As for the new p4 machine, I have been able to compare it to a dell p4 of similar spec. The gateway runs far too hot, and crashes a lot. The friend with the dell machine has been delighted with his machine, it has performed flawlessly so far. This is a small example, but generally dell's machines seem to be configured properly, with gateways sometimes looking like rush jobs.

That said, I think gateway offers better value for the tech-savvy user, as Gandalf mentioned already. They don't use the same components consistently, but these days they aren't usually bad components. I have a nice second machine consisting of a gateway motherboard which has sound and video integrated, and it runs happily for months without crashing.

boot_sect

HEY if linux woz making the dell stable then it's not really fair to compare a dell machine running linux to a gateway one running win_9x (wash mouth) is it? Anyhow if you mistakenly buy a dell on the premis that their support is better or some other such nonesense I guess go ahead it's your money to waste I guess? That is by no means an endoursement of gateway but for example a dell with a p4 @ 1700 mhz uses rambus ram on the same board as the gateway right? so what gives ? Personally the packard bel I bought from PC world (dirt cheap @ 1100) in September works just fine yeah? And while I paid a grand for a system with a NVIDIA AGP with 16mb of on board ram dell and gateway were shafting their customers with the intel81x chipset bulls-it, and useless 1st generation usb printers & scanners that the customer had to buy as part of this package or that yeah? Really day in day out people pay like 1500 1700 quid for systems with web cams and printers and stuff and you talk to these people and they don't know how to use a mouse to click the start button yeah? Seriously all OEMs IBM Dell Gateway are in the business of making money off of the consumer who 1. Buys dell mistakenly believing that the same hardware in a different case is better? or 2. Buys Gateway thinking Dells are overpriced and are a brand name nothing more and doesn't apply the logic sufficiently to realise that say for example the new AMD stuff uses a via chipset right? and ergo 90% of all new systems will too so don't waste yer money on a name brand yeah? Hunt for the bargains yeah? I mean my grand might have bought me a 600mhz intel810 joke in September from an oEm? but it would have cost 1300 with printer and scanner that I would have to have bought to get this discount or that yeah? If you have your heart set on a Dell because you like the colour of the case better then the Gateway or IBM then get it from the Dell returns department what is it called 'factory surplus'? Yeah sweet ummm..... ehem.. what woz I saying?

Oh and buy the way as I used to work in Tech Support yeah, I guess I can attest that while not every tech you talk to may pay you much attention or give you alot of time buy and large lots of them are really good at their jobs yeah?(maybe why gateway pays them and stuff?) and most errors are user errors yeah? I mean say while I was on Tech Support maybe 10 - 20 percent of calls were hardware failure while 80% of customers thought it was yeah? But if you believe that an Ensoniq in a Dell is somehow going to sound better then it will in a system from PC world then who am I to argue?

www.limewire.com

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BOYCOTT E$$0

moist

I'll add my comment for the hell of it

I bought a Gateway nearly 4 years ago... It gave me numerous problems and is actually about to die...
I gave up on gateway tech support after 2 long and fruitless calls.

The main thing is that I actually worked in Gateways Service and Repair center for 3 months.
Thats where broken machines are sent to to be fixed :-)
The quality of the componants was muck, about 2/3 of the componants didn't work, at all...
We got rakes of machines in that were sent out new, and never worked... DOA...
I would recomend against gateway...

We use dells for our workstations in work (*lol*) and they have generally been great.
The only problem I know of was with my own machine, which would reboot for no apparent reason 2 or 3 times a day...
Rang Dell support, and 2 days later some guy came out, replaced my mobo and left, before I even got into work.
The machine has been fine ever since...
Mind you, that was corporate support....

Xterminator

I really have to have my say here.

I believe that the 2 machines are built from the same pool of OEM **** cheap parts, (Dell+Gateway). I also have worked on a multinational helpdesk for 2 yrs.

This difference is the tech support.
I know both Gateway+Dell tech support people and hope I don't offend any of them but!!!

Gateway tech support are muppets.
They really are. Here is just 1 example.

I called them when my brand new Gateway PC was delivered and connected up. (Remember I have MCP's and hardware knowledge to at least A+.)
It would not allow me to conect to Gateway.net, the 'free' ISP which was part of the package Gateway promote so much.
It told me i had to have a 'new' Gateway pc to connect to it.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the software my self. It didnt fix it.
I called again. After 1/2 hr I got a tech who said, "no you have to uninstall this and this "(some other application).
I called Gateway, and after 1/2hr hold i got a tech who told me to format + reload my entire machine. Kill a fly with a sledge-hammer.
Fair enought, I fdisked, formatted and rebuilt using the gateway cd+the windows cd.
Now the dvd playback software wouldnt work, and geteway.net still was not working.
I called the next tech and after an hr of holding got through. Talked to him for 5 minutes explaining in detail what happened.
He then put me on hold repeatedly, while he explained this to someone else (i assume, cause i knwo how a callcentre works). He then extracted a file from the cd which got the dvdplayer software working.
He told me i could not use the gateway.net because I had an old bios, and i had to use esat or oceanfree! No solution offered.
It was so late i let it go to test the dvd which was fixed.
The next day i called back , and held for 1/2 hr. When i got through the next agent said" no no the last agent was wrong." He said we'll fix it etc, and i thought that I had finally reached an experienced tech! i explained to him what happened. He then put me on hold and came back and said "did you say you unistalled it?" Yes i did .
Put on hold again. Next he asks "did you restore a system snapshot?" I told him no. Firast it never worked, and second it did not work immediately after a rebuild, thus a snapshot is not going to fix it.
He put me on hold.
He came back and said "Did you fdisk when you re-loaded " Yes i did! I wuz getting angry by now!
He tried to put me on hold so i asked to speak to the supervisor, as i felt i was getting the runaround.
He hung up on me.
I called back and to skip the q i didnt ask for tech support but sales. to get an answer straight away. I asked for a supervisor, but was refused because it was a tech support problem. I told them i didn't want to hold for 1/2 hr, could they arrange a call back. they refused.

I just used oceanfree, and told everyone i knew ( as i work in IT that was a lot of people) about how ****e gateway were.

6mths later on their website for a drivr, i saw a bios update that fixed my problem. If a tech had said we know about your problem, we cant fix it at the moment, can we call you when we know how, i would have been happier. But they put me through crappy pd, knowing about the problem, but hiding it all the time

[This message has been edited by Xterminator (edited 22-06-2001).]

Xterminator

Whew that was bitter ...

moist

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Xterminator:
I really have to have my say here.
<snip bitter rant>
</font>

Erm was that a freephone number you were calling ??

I vaguely recall some scam to do with Gateway.net, basicly it didn't work when shipped.
Perhaps it was to get more tech calls, but I don't recall if they have a freephone number.

em... how would a bios update effect your ability to log onto gateway.net
Whatever about modem drivers or somthing silly like that.

EvilGeorge

Dell and Gateway are OEM companies - they get the same parts for most things .
EG network cards are exactly the same any one who thinks one company is better than the other is retarded.

Remember you can call into tech support in one company get a mupet on the phone and you have a bad experience - but most of the rest of them know what they are doing and then get the oposite from the other company - your opinion can be formed over the flip of a coin.

As regards systems I say screw all oem companies all of them take off jumpers for overclocking and do all the **** that you want to save money and ppl screwing with the machines - less stuff to play with means less stuff to break , this has always been their policy.

Also the s/w they give will be cheap and ****e - its only meant to do the basic thing - if you want something that is worth while get the proper ****.

In my opinion (although I work for one of these companies) screw them and build a machine if you want a good quality product which you can blame no one but yourself if you **** it up.

Shiminay

LOADS of people in Castlebar (my home town) got Gateway machines through a special offer that ran when we were runner's up in the Information Age Town Competition. 50% of those PC's that Gateway sold the people of Castlebar didn't work on delivery - this is an approximate figure, but it's not exagerated. Everyone has had some form of problem with them and as a result, the Chamber of Commerce and Information Age Town Committee have switched the whole lot over to Dell and told Gateway to fluck off! They were the worst pieces of crap I've ever seen - someone asked me to take a look at theirs as the onboard video card was fu><0red, so I went through the usual of un-installing it and re-installing it etc, and in the end had to get on to tech support. 2 hours later they finally agreed that the motherboard needed replacing and they were sending a tech out to fix it.

My mother's got one of the Dell machines the committee is giving out to clubs and societies and it's never given any grief from Day 1. Everyone else has had the same experience.

Bottom line:
Gateway = RUBBISH
Dell = Quality

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All the best!
Dav
@B^)
So Bob Hoskins was about to roll a spliff when in walks Dana with her 3 foot Bong
[honey i] violated [the kids]
Tribes 2 Goodness
The Dawn of the Beefy King approaches...

WhiteWashMan

i work in gateways IT department.
to be honest, theres not an awful lot of problem with them. i also own a dell, and theres been no problems with them either.
most problems i come across are of the user variety.
but, i would build my own machine. if you know about pcs then build it and maintain it yourself. its a lot cheaper.
if you nothing about pcs, then go for whatever gives you the cheapest and best deal. support for dells is better though. gateway tech support is notoriously bad. not surprising really, most of them are too busy trying to set up linux boxes on their IT systems and getting fired. you just cant get good staff these days...
1-800-orangatang

Xterminator

Nah, the gateway software was bios locked, eg it checked for a certain bios level, and if u didint haver it the programme didnt even launch!
The tel no. was a free phone no.

Xterminator

I did make that point in my first tirade too.

I dont think there a world of difference between the components of a dell and a gateway.

But moma some of the muppets on the phones for the Gateway!

Red Moose

I won't buy Dell because of the cases, simple as that. The components used by both companies are identical; and like the person said above, anyone who says Dell are more stable just because, I don't understand.

Of course, stability on an OEM PC is OS dependent. My Gateway had Win98SE preinstalled, with some garbage software like the DVD player, Gateway.net connection stuff, etc., . All garbage, and the first thing I did was reinstall using the original Win98SE CD, not the Gateway one, because they customise the installation routine and I don't trust that.

Needless to say, I've never had a problem, but I knew exactly what I was ordering, and typically looking at the site, the basic models are rubbish, and it's well worth telling them exactly what video card you want, etc., . The Voodoo 3000 was aload of junk, but I knew that so I got the NVidia one instead.

But stability for these systems is perfect as the components are mainstream industry standard, probably for both systems. Intel mobo and Intel CPU (I know I know, but it's stable) and so on.

I only see the need for OEM systems is that you get a much better deal on the overall hardware price, as individually boxed components are *much* more expensive.

The Gateway guy I spoke to about it told me that there would be no problem with linux, etc., (I wasn;t sure about the logo in the BIOS and whether there was funkiness going on there regarding boot sectors), and he even told me how to reset the DVD reader so I wouldn't be stuck with 5 changes of region and that's that.

Overall I found they were decent on the phone, and had the machine built in 2 days. Like I said though, knowing what you are buying is the key. Look at the PC World integrated video/sound/mobo crap; at least Compaq are gone now .

[This message has been edited by Red Moose (edited 25-06-2001).]

Gibo

Xterminator: for someone who is self proclaimed to be very intelligent when i tcomes to Pc hardware knowledge you still fdisked and started again from a new PC ??
Not really the ideal solution now is it??
in the end...??

Kenjd

I have a gateway at home for the last 2 years and never any problems, we use dell in work, they are always releasing updated bios for their motherboards and we had a problem with compatibility with a lot of different sound and video cards, oh yeah only last week they recalled a lot of battteries from the Inspiron laptops cos they might overheat and explode!!! When you ring dell your garentued to be on the phone for at least half an hour listen to elevator music.
Personally I think all these big companies are the same...go get a Fugitsu..lol they are goin cheap in tesco!!

Jademan

I have worked with Dell's machine for about 2 years....they are good systems in an it environment...for personal use they are not so great for upgrading especially if you want to replace the motherboard due to the dual connector for the PSU. I have had no problem with there tech support...but mayby that because i used to be atech support agent myself for a pc periferal manufacturer.My only issue is that if any parts other than memory are nicked you cannot buy replacement from Dell...no mather who you are. I do not have any experiance of Gataway's other than been told 5 years ago by an Network Manager to keep away from them as they were so noisy.

Kenjd

Jademan now u mention it my home gateway is a bit noisy! The hard drive sounds like someone wound it up and let it go...although it is 20gigs and full!!!