ATTENTION: Stay away from GATEWAY computers

My advise to all of you is not to buy computers from Gateway and I'm only speaking from my personal experience.

I recently bought a desktop from Gateway 700XL. The machine has not been functioning right from the minute it arrived. I have been having so much problem with it. The service center technicians did not do a good job at fixing it either. I have been back and forth to this store several times and my PC is still having problems. I've spent a lot of money of this computer and spend more time getting it fix then using on it.

Just a friendly warning to all of you. DON'T PURCHASE GATEWAY PCs!

I personally despise Gateway. Between them and (the former) Compaq....

I'd stick to Dells (dude...) but you can't get a personal system without wasting tons of $$$ on Windoze (Linux is an option only on some business models). I guess the best thing is to build your own. You won't save any money, and you'll lose some time, but at least you'll get what you want.

personally, i've never bought 'pre-made' boxes. i prefer to 'assemble' my own pc. that way, i get what i want.

I'll second that. Pre-made systems suck bad.

They'll put a nice processor and vidio card in but then give a second rate motherboard because most people do not know what they are let alone the importance, second rate everything that they can get away with. Also they are not any cheaper than having a custom system assembled. I personaly put together all of my systems, but you can go to most smaller comp stors and they will put together a system with all parts of your choice (so you know they are quality) and the cost is in the same ballpark. except the system is then tailored to your needs.

STAY AWAY FROM GATEWAY, COMPAQUE, DELL, etc.

I have to disagree.
I have a gateway and have not had any problems with it
out of the three years that I've had it.
It was also built to my specs.

Just my opinion

well I'm not sayin' that they will all break or anything like that. But i am saying that they fill in the unlisted parts with knock-offs and sub standard performing hardware. and built to your specs from a list of *their* parts.

If you want a top of the line system built to your choises (not picking from their list of pre-aproved parts) your better off elsewhere.

on the other hand though if your just a typical user (surfin the web, playin games etc.) then they'll probably serve the need fine. Its the power user that wants ore bang for the buck that will benifit most from avoiding those companys

i buy computers from the local parts store. i just tell them what parts i wants and they slap it together for free and it has a 3 year warranty

strange how you bring up "wasting money on windows", i bought Windows XP with my new computer last December and by late June it was starting to crap out. Windows would give cronic errors of memory problems. i went to the store to buy more RAM because i thought that was a problem but the tech guy said to just format the computer and start from scratch...it worked good but then the 30 day thing expired and i was locked out of my computer, it told me that my CD key was already in use (by me BEFORE i formatted though).
so i'm basically stuck on Linux now, i have to play games on my Celeron which is brutaly slow

Stuck on Linux? Is that anything like being plucked from the 9th ring of Hell and getting "stuck" in Heaven?

Agreement all around. If I were going for a truly good PC, I would do it myself. But, in the end, I'm lazy. I got a decent motherboard from Dell, middle-rate RAM sticks (which I wound up replacing with bigger CL2 sticks anyway, just because that was the easiest way to max it), a nice monitor, typical CD-ROM, excellent CD-RW, and a VERY nice HDD. All in all, for an "off the shelf" system, I'd say I got a fair deal from Dell.