Gateway 2000: Gone But Not Forgotten

[trgz]

I almost bought a Gateway but in the end the Viglen I got was a better deal IIRC (better monitor/performance/spec). A neighbour bought one a year later - it was pretty good. Cool packaging!

 

[TheRealSCDC]

The Gateway to ripping off people. Seems like the modern motto of many companies.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Ah, Gateway 2000....

I remember one of their ads in PC Magazine (remember the "Abort, Retry, Fail" comedic bits at the back?) way back in 1992. They all dressed up like cast members from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was one of the best computer ads that I'd ever seen because they really went all-out with the costumes, weapons and settings. Ted Waitt was dressed up as Robin Hood and his director of purchasing was dressed up as the Sherriff of Nottingham with other employees dressed up as Maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlett and the rest of the merry men. I remember thinking "this is just awesome!".

Their PCs also looked really good at the time (aesthetically that is, they were beautiful to look at). I never ended up getting one because I did my first build almost 4 years prior and was already hooked on custom building. I'd have to say that they were the most appealing "brand-in-a-box" PC on the market at the time. Then Acer bought them, dropped the "2000" part and made Gateway their premium line before discontinuing the name altogether. I remember that back when I worked at Tiger Direct, Acer had three brands of craptops that we carried. Their entry-level craptops were branded as eMachines, their mainstream craptops were branded as Acer and their fancy craptops were branded as Gateway. Over in Europe, they were also producing Packard-Bell at the time. Now there's just Acer.

I'd love to get my hands on an old Gateway 2000 just to open it up and see what parts they used. Hell, they existed long enough to have made ATX standard PCs so maybe I'd even be tempted to do a build in an old Gateway 2000 case!

 

[Setfree]

I did Gateway phone tech support via a contractor called Service Zone between the summer of 2001 and 2002. At $9 an hour, it was a high-paying part-time job for a college student in the South. I learned a lot in that year as a tech for Gateway and am undoubtedly in a better place now because of it. R.I.P.

Maybe I worked on your team USAvenger? I also did Gateway phone tech support via Service Zone 2000-2002. My biggest complaint was the Gateway Direct tech's earned twice what we did ($18.00 an hour) for doing the same work, had more tools like Remote Desktop and a 2 minute longer average call time. I also had a couple Gateway PC's that worked better than the fiasco of the Dell capacitors failing (which Dell knew beforehand.)

 

[EdmondRC]

First computer was a Gateway. I still remember helping my dad order it on the phone. I think it was more than he wanted to spend, haha. It had a 3DFX Voodoo, I don't remember which model, but it had no issues running Quake 2. We needed the computer for school... of course.

 

[docbillingsley]

Sadly true. What's worse is when people are brought on board to execute this exact "business plan", cause all sorts of damage, and then move on to their next gig. Richer and never held accountable.

there's a good documentary called Fishing with Dynamite that looks at why so many companies operate this way, versus focusing on long-term growth. It's a relatively new approach that works well for a very, very short time -- enough for some folks to get very rich but leaves destruction behind

 

[Red34jfp]

It's weird that this article doesn't mention how Walmart has revived the Gateway brand for its own line of affordable laptops (and tablets). As an European, who got his first PC fairly late in the middle 2000s, I wasn't really familiar with Gateway in the first place and I only discovered the brand when notebookcheck reviewed one of these new laptops.

 

[BigMeatyClackers]

I used to treat the Gateway store like a free internet cafe because they had a T1 connection. Lol

 

[Hodor]

12 MHz 80286..... man, what a monster. At only $1,995 it was a steal.

Runs "Prince of Persia" for DOS at maximum settings with raytracing and everything.

 

[Arbie]

Lets see a piece on the TRS-80. This and the Apple were the most powerful and successful PCs on the market for many years. Though not as slick as the Apple machine The TRS offered more value, had more third-party support and, I think, more open software. As a Z80 machine it taught lots of people coding with the 8080-ish instruction set, so they hit the ground running on the IBM PC. I wrote a teletype driver in hex, which taught me the value of an assembler... along with designing a custom hardware interface board to connect the TTY to the TRS. Those were the days of getting a 100% OC by changing two pins on a J-K flip-flop. So I laugh at the measly 20% OCs the kids brag about now... crikey.

 

[pctech2000]

As an adult, my first Gateway aio was the Navy Blue Hot Wheels Model . Lol From 1999-2001 we experimented on these in my tech school. And because of all the issues surrounding these and other models of PCs, that's how I made most of my money for all of the 2000s. I was just wondering what happened to Gateway? Which led me to this wonderful article, and a very nostalgic moment. :+( RIP to the best of times!