I heard from Best Buy that Gateway Laptop Computers are the same as Acer.
Hope this help those on the fence decide if the brand is ok or not. Not that I honestly despise Circuit City.. Even though it is owned by Tiger Direct.. Which is another store I do not like..
Acer owns the brands Gateway and eMachine.
They may have a common support system and again some common parts. It is still a different brand and target consumer.
It is like the marriage from hell of HP and Compaq.
Now for my impression of Gateway in general. Since for her birthday my wife had her pick of any machine she could dream of. Any machine.. and she chose a dang Gateway FX 6800-01. In November it is was a top of the line OEM machine. Especially for big box shops and OEM machines.
Surprisingly the OEM parts were aligned with the cost. You get what you pay for in
Gheytway.
You are going to get an ok value out of that $500. The support for Gateway is US based. They are not superb, but a good:
ok. The support site is easy to navigate and use.
I haven't had any issues in general with my wife's machine. Keep in mind. Even though Gateway in general is ok in the value segment. They seem to pop out lemons all the time for laptop machines. I give them credit for making good and fixing the issues. They re a bit better than HP/Compaq sort of in some ways
The only bad thing I can say about the Gateway experience. In my experience. Is that the machine was shipped in mid-November. It took more than 2 months for support to get everything in place to fully support the machine. Though the CSR, were a huge help and on top of it. It annoyed me to have to rely on a rep instead of looking up updated drivers and stuff like that. The machine shipped with a DFI board and an OK parts list I could get stuff going easily on my own.
Since Gateway - LOADS - more crap in the OS than any other OEM. Yeah the beat out Dell... You know the drill.
