Gateway Satisfaction Poll

Are you happy with your Gateway laptop?

 

I just came home with a MT3705 2 days ago and so far I really like it. This is my first chance at checking Vista out. I really like the overall looks of it but find the keyboard a bit spongy. Only other thing is I would of liked at least one usb port on the rear. They all are on the left side, but not to big a deal.

 

I wish you would have worded the poll a bit differently. How the hell can anyone say they are "completely" happy with a computer they have bought from any manufacturer? I actually have several refurbished desktop systems from Gateway, and 2 laptops one new. For the most part I am very happy with them.

I must say I hate the darn synaptics pads on them. Also I really miss the shut off switch for the pad like I have on my older HP. At least Gateway resessed the darn thing. My Averatec 4155 you can't even tell when your on the pad or not. It's completely flush with no discernable seam. So you actually have to look at it to tell if your on it. I'm constantly tring to move the pointer with nothing happening. Only to find I'm not even on the darn thing.

So far I like the two Gateway laptops. Both are dual cores. One is the original Core Duo, the other is a Core 2 Duo. This M685 I have is really a nice rig. The MX6960 is brand new and I haven't even really gotten around to fully configuring it to my tastes. This is starting to sound like a review LOL.

 

I think Gateway is by far the worse company I have dealt with. Other than their cheap and bad products, they have some of the worse customer service I have ever encountered. I would advice no one to buy anything from gateway

 

laptop itself is great, im not sure vista is for me though. just dont try using gateways online chat for support. you get no where. they just follow their standard protocol and you get no where and they know less about computers than i do. at the end of my chat he asked if there was anything else, and i said yea, my "v" key is hard to push. and he told me to reinstall the drivers lol. the key is fine now, just needed broke in. but im satisfied.

 

I got a dual core laptop for $499. Can't beat the price, but I got a little frustrated with Vista. It was slow with many errors. But after getting it up to 1G RAM and getting rid of McAffee virus program, the laptop seems to be zipping along with no errors. The screen is disappointing, but after using my Dell 700m for a couple of years, all screens look pretty poor.

 

OK here we go. When I bought my Gateway 1 year ago I loved it to death.
I was almost completely satisfied with it until...

The left hinge seized up and the the cast-metal hinge mount broke. Not a fluke, this was a design flaw that affected many other gateways.

Gateway repair sucked. They failed to replace broken plastic trim parts, failed to replace the defective hinge itself (it will cause the new mount to break, it's only a matter of time), and failed to reconnect my f'ing speakers! It required full disassembly of the laptop to reconnect the plug that they forgot...

I find the hard drive is slow and the sound is sometimes choppy. After owning it for 1 year the power adapter cord has fallen to crap and the computer will freeze if any program or operating system attempts a warm boot.

The fan developed a hideous noise and seems to run very often.

The plastic is loose and falling apart everywhere, but this is probably due to the poor repair work from gateway. This thing has never been the same since I got it back from them.

I didn't plan to play any games but this laptop certainly isn't capable of it anyway. My friend's dual-core version (AMD) with a slightly upgraded graphics card is 1000x better than my model, virtually all other things remaining the same.

I really loved this machine but it just isn't durable! I'm replacing it with a HEL80 and hoping for the best.

 

I have a Gateway 14'' 3520GZ for almost 3 years, and it just works and works. I never had to contact Gateway once. If I have listened to all the negatives thing I heard about Gateway, I would never have found this little gem. No laptop is perfect. The tiny speakers placed on the under side of the laptop produce very poor sound. The wireless range is not the best. Now I have been a happy owner of an HP DV9207 for 3 weeks. I hope it will be as reliable as the Gateway has been to me.

 

I bought a Gateway laptop in 2002, before it was bought by emachines (right?)... and it just died yesterday. It kept on kicking!! I am considering buying a new one but I am wary of all these negative reviews. But do all other brands have the same amount of unhappy customers. I found that most happy customers are content and quiet and there are just the few angry ones that are vocal and dissuade potential buyers. sucks for the shoppers!

 

I think your pretty much spot on here. No one likes it when they get a bad product. Every manufacturer has them. Personally I think it is just the luck of the draw. My experience with Gateway so far has been fine. My first laptop from them had a bad battery and a bad DVD-Rom drive (wouldn't write to CD's). I bought this thing at Geeks.com as a refirb. At the time it was an incredible buy, CoreDuo Gig of ram 7600 video card. When I called them up I was near the end of my Ninety days and I wasn't expecting much. I had already gone out and bought a new DVD writer anyway. I even told the guy that on the phone. They could not have been nicer. Sent me both items almost no questions asked. I was so impressed I upped the warranty to 3 yrs. Now as for sending a system back to them. I have no experience with that.

 

Since MS released Vista, I decided it was time to find a lower cost laptop with XP.

TigerDirect was (and is) offering many refurb Gateway units. I found what I thought was a decent notebook for the money.

MX64446, 2.0 ghz turion 64, 1.0 g RAM, DVD burner, 100g HD, 15.4 widescreen, for $569. When I got it, the keyboard was messed up, and there was an altec program running running, but no wireless hardware from that company was on the notebook. They wouldn't recognize the serial number at first......had to call back the next night. I already fixed the keyboard, but oh well, the unit seems to work ok. I never thought the touch worked very good......

The build was pretty cheap (to me anyway); had a lot of flex everywhere. Then the screen would get dark vertical line across itself and the unit would lock up. Call tech support and she told me it had gone GOOFY. I need to disconnect the battery and power to fix it. It did, another 4 times the next day.

It is now back at TigerDirect and I am awaiting a credit for the purchase. To their credit, TD has treated me fairly so far and i expect that to continue. Gateway's tech support and units have a long way to go IMO.

I am posting this from my new refurb Dell e1505. This is more of what I am used to. Their refurbs are generally rock solid. This is ny family's 4th refurb from Dell and have very few issues with any of them.

 

Well.... I bought a gateway about six months ago for the price of $700.00 new, model number mx3414.
It has a 14 inch screen.
It was great up until the point where it decided not to work about 1 month ago. It powers on, the fan turns on, lights, everything but the screen and.... I dont know what else yet. i cant get into safe mode.

So I got ready for customer service the other day.

I have a one year limited warranty so I put calling the number off for about a month hoping to find the problem on a forum. I heard by rumor that gateways service was crap. I was worried it would be a battle I couldn't win.
So just today about an hour ago i finally got the nerve and called the number.
I initially got the automated lady and just gave her the information I could and then when it came time to give the model number no matter how I said it the damn thing couldn't understand me, I even had my mom try saying the numbers M X 3 4 1 4, nothing.
finally just as I was about to hang up and look for another number to call it redirected me to a real person.

First thought that entered my mind, is this going to be any better then the robot I just finished talking to.

The customer service lady did have an indian accent BUT... she was very helpful. to be honest I was quite suprised. She walked me through quite nicely on the diagnostic, and answered every question I had. We didn't have one miscommunication, not one!
In the end she told me everything that I had picked up on any forums recently about what the problem may be.
Gateway is sending a prepaid box that should get here in three days, It looks like I don't have to pay shipping to send it in, everything looks good so far but i'm not getting my hopes up until this whole process is finished, computer fixed and ready to fly.

This notebook up until it broke was great. Im not much of a gamer as far as PCs go so it was ideal for me. i love the screen size, and while allot of people didn't like the paintjob it had I liked it, I thought it was sleek and suttle.
I never had a problem up until now. So I hope everything goes well with gateways support.

After everything is finished Ill post how it all went somewhere on this forum.

 

Well, I wont vote again, but I have to say that the customer service was excellent overall.

I had a 1 year gateway warranty from the date of purchase.
I called as I said above and well here's the update.

The Shipping box arrived in 3 days, It was an easy thing to do, everything was included, free shipping both ways. and it was a very secure shipping box that they sent.
The only trouble I had was sending it off.

Currently I am living in a small town, and the post office wouldn't accept the package from me back to gateway, even with the postage payed. So I called gateway again and they were a little upset that the post office tried to make me pay shipping and here was the mix up, as far as I understand it.
The post office works with a shipping company called, DHL, and the shipping company doesn't pick up packages in this area. OR SO THE POST OFFICE SAID! They said that the only place I could drop off the package was over 500 miles away!
SO....I called gateway, They were a little upset about this and didn't really know whats up with th post office and said, the shipping should be payed, so they gave me the number of the company DHL. Gateway was extremely honest and strait forward, very helpfull.
I called DHL and said to the computer voice, pickup package.
I set up a pickup.
They arrived the next day to pick up the package.
I asked them why they would drive 500 miles to just pick up one package and they said that are actually located in a city that is 50 miles from where I live...
well.
They picked up my computer on Monday, and I got it back on Friday.
It went from North Dakota to California Back to North Dakota, Arriving to me this time by Fed EX, It took 5 days.
And....It worked. I was Jacked!

I couldn't believe that it arrived that quickly.
I mean they must have just recieved it, took it out of the box, fixed it on the spot, that instant, and put it back in the box, shipped it same day. It was awesome!!
And I didn't pay a dime!
I might have to pick up that extended warranty that they are offering,
I cant fix everything, and that was fairly quick and easy!!
They said it was something like 120$ for a extended 1 year that they would tack on to the end of the 1 year that I had Initially from purchase.
That isn't that bad for that kind of service.
The guy on the phone stated that "As long as you don't hit it with a sledge hammer, or pour a bucket of watter on it, We will fix it under warranty."
Well if thats true thats pretty good for 120$ for a year, I have to look into it some more but it looks like gateway is ok.
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If there was one thing I would have liked that I didn't recieve it would be a little info on what was wrong with my computer, all I got was a thank you for choosing gateway letter. But on the positive side, I never paid a dime!
And I have a laptop that works again.
I think that if I call gateway back they will probably have on record what was wrong but I haven't bothered yet.
to find out. been to busy setting up my notebook, updating all my software, with the shi%ty 56K I have now.
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Another thing, I thought I was going to loose all my data, but I didn't, everything was there, My guess is that it was a Video Card or something that went out, or was deleted somehow, mabie a virus? I don't know, in the warranty it said that gateway wont cover virus infection. well....I never recieved a bill, so I believe that either they do, or their was no virus. I'm itching to find out what it was so i may just have to call and find out--
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mercuryblue

 

NO

I have had 2 gateways and both went out with bad video.
starts to flicker then black screen.

 

I bought two NX500Ss and both have given me trouble since day one. One of them is literally falling apart and unusable (because the power adapter doesn't connect into the crumbling casing). I would think laptops should be more durable, but these are flimsy. Gateway said they would repair for $300. Why would I want another worthless case like this, let alone pay that much for one?

 

Yes, very satisfied!
My first Gateway was a G6-350 desktop (Pentium 2 on windows 98) and is still working. We used to use it for video editing. No hardware problems experienced with it except third party software issues.
My second gateway is an 18 month old nx850x notebook-am using for mobile and on site multimedia pesentation production-video/photo editing, 3D animation and website development. It's a great desktop replacement and it had never failed me once.
And i have no issues with.

 

MX7515....

Heavy, Poorly built (getting cracked), unstable power... What do I say more..

Still it is fast and can play some games, but that's all.

 

I picked up a Gateway MT6711 from Best Buy for $499 because I ordered a ThinkPad online and it won't ship for more than a month. I needed something to get some work done in the meantime. I plan to to sell it on eBay when I'm done - but only because I need business class durability and portability.

It's a budget laptop to be sure, but I'm quite happy with what I got. I tried to get by with an HP DV6000 Pavilion, but I had three in a row (within two weeks) that didn't hold up – I wasted so much time and energy on them, I'll never buy HP again. I have to say that Gateway is an excellent budget class laptop but is overlooked because of it's looks.

This is what I like about the MT6711:

-No high pitch noise. I had two HP's that were so annoying I couldn't stand it any longer. Maybe I just got lucky, but I haven't heard too many complaints about this noise from Gateway either. It is common in other laptops and is caused by something on the motherboard resonating at a certain frequency. However, it could have been resolved by engineering at the design phase. It tells me that the HP DV series is not well engineered.

-Relatively cool. All laptops generate heat, but all three HP's I had were extremely hot to touch. I realized that there really wasn't good ventilation – if you look at the HP DV series you'll notice that there aren't any vents on the side or the back, they're all on the bottom. This makes them run so hot it's uncomfortable. The Gateway, on the other hand, has a big vent on the left side that lets the heat escape. The fan isn't too loud when it's on either – for me, I'd rather have function over style any day. The palm rests are cooler than most to the touch.

-Wireless works. Two of the HP's I had were equipped with Intel processors and wireless cards and worked fine (but they had a high pitched noise). So I exchanged them for an HP with an AMD processor and a Broadcom wireless card. The noise was gone but the wireless didn't work with my router. Broadcom, it turns out, isn't well regarded for their compatibility. I had to update drivers on the card and the firmware on the router to get it to work just a little bit – people tried to tell me this is normal...horse hockey! If I'm at a cafe or a hotel, should I have to run around and have people update their firmware for me? Gateway at least bought their budget cards from Realtek and so far I haven't had any problems connecting to three different networks.

-Keyboard is decent. The Gateway keyboard does flex a little, but I find that it's quite good for a laptop in this price range. It's not as bad as other keyboards I've tried in more expensive laptops.

-Touchpad is pretty good. I like the space on the side dedicated for scrolling. It divided by a ridge and it's easy to feel the scroll feature without looking. The buttons are raised a little and clicking is comfortable.

-Power cord adapter is “L” shaped. This is one of those things that is a minor detail, but shows that at least a little thought went into the overall design. The three HP's I had had a straight power adapter going into the laptop – whenever I moved or shifted the laptop, I felt like the tension on the plug would break it right off the motherboard. It also stuck out too much and made me too conscious of its presence.

It's been a while since I've been shopping for a laptop so I made a lot of comparisons to the bad experience I had with HP. Gateway is underrated, they make well-designed budget laptops.