Would you buy a Gateway NV5378u (or any Gateway laptop)

Wednesday I bought a Gateway NV5378u laptop at Best Buy. I was pretty happy with it... for the short time I owned it, about two hours. I had left to go somewhere and turned the laptop off. When I returned later in the night I go to turn my laptop on and the display does not work. I could not find a Gateway tech support number but did call Best Buy's "Geek Squad" support as it came with my laptop.

The guy told me to turn the computer off and remove the battery then hold in the power switch. I did so and the display worked again... for awhile. After some automatic updates the display once again failed upon restart. At this point I knew it was defective and returned it the next day. I was given the option to swap it but I just got a refund.

The short time I did use the computer I was impressed with several things. 1. The computer came with very little bloatware. 2. The recovery burning process was way faster than any other manufacturers recovery burning procedure, and 3. the touch sensitive panel on the top of the keyboard.

I have to say that there is one thing that I don't really like at all and wonder about the durability and how long it will last is where the power button is located. The power button is embedded in the right hinge of the laptop in a small alcove within the rounded hinge design. When the laptop is opened and closed, the power button moves from side to side with the rest of the display. Thought it might have been mine at first but saw this is the case with the display model as well.

Although I am not an engineer I would think that this design would eventually go bad much sooner than any other power button placement due to the fact of where it is located and that the button moves and rotates with the display assembly. I would think that this design will come back and bite Gateway in the future.

So with all of that in the open, how does Gateway rate as a computer company in terms of reliability? I know they are all part of Acer along with eMachines. Would you buy another Gateway or Acer laptop if you had gotten a computer with this kind of trouble right out of the box? What do you think about the placement and life expectancy of the power switch on these units? Should I go with another brand or should I just get another one like the one I got and hope that there is no problems. And where is Acer's/Gateway's support based out of? Do they have US based support or are they outsourced to some country that has people you can't understand?

While I'm at it and have so many "nails" in my pocket, I might as well take another one and put yet one more nail in Acer's coffin. I bought an Acer laptop late last year and upon taking it out of the box had several problems with it right from the start. Among the numerous problems were a bad DVD drive which would not read the recovery dvd's it just burned or any other burnable DVD's for that matter. I had countless problems getting the wireless to work and got constant disconnects and dropouts. And besides all that it was just slow. Of course I returned that one as well.

 

The rotating power switch just means it's mounted on the lid rather than the base. I don't really see much of an issue with it, honestly.

I'm (sort of) planning to buy a Gateway NV5924u (if I can't buy a Dell Studio XPS 16) and I see it has the same hinge/power switch design. I'm sure it will be fine.

 

I feel for ya man, really do. I hated Gateway products back in the mid-80's-90's for various reasons. Made note to self, "Never buy another Gateway product".

One day in 2006 I'm walking through Best Buy and an announcement was made of a store special about laptops and a price reduction. I wandered over to the still forming display table and there was my first laptop, MX6920, reduced to $599 from $999. I needed a computer in the house and thought what the hell. To this day not a problem with it other than I still have XP on it. Its used everyday by my wife and runs CS3 on it.

Since then I started researching my next laptop (about 2 months) and wanted something more powerful. I found this forum and started looking through threads about machines and tech specs, yadda, yadda, and bought the P-7805u in 03/09.
No problems except the F9 key wasn't completely secured. I waited until the year was almost up, in case something else might crop up and brought back to BB for them to fix, they replaced the keyboard under warranty. (BB extended warranty). Had it back in a week. I have enjoyed it very much.

I bought a netbook earlier this year in Feb, LT2104u and again have no problems. I took a gamble on the netbook, no real reviews and very little feedback on the netbooks but I felt the deal was right for what it was.

So there is my story and I am sticking to it. Take it for what its worth, its not brand loyalty, but rather if something works, stick with it. I would research reviews on higher dollar amount purchases to see if there is a lot of problems with the model, don't buy the brand spanking new one.
For instance, I was going to replace my MX6820 with the new ASUS G73JH-A1, but I haven't yet, waiting for a little fall out yet. Perhaps Gateway may spit out something that is comparable to it.
Anyway good luck on your next purchase.

 

Here's the results of a recent reliability survey.

Gateway is down near the bottom but it's not the worst.

(Guess who the best is? Hint: it's not a fruit)

Anyway that said, I have had a P-6860FX since August 2008. The only problem I had was that my factory Vista installation got corrupted somehow and failed after about a month. After reinstalling Vista, the laptop has worked flawlessly since. The FX series laptops are pretty well regarded.

That said, I now have an Asus G73jh-a1 on pre order.

If Gateway came out with a Core i7 laptop with the mobile 5870 GPU in it, I would consider it.

 

my gateway 5927u i5 is great, no problems whats so ever.

 

Gateway is about as good as Acer these days (since they're owned by Acer and produced by the same OEM). So, like Acer, build quality seems to vary by model. Some Acers are rock-solid, others are like handling fine china.

The NV5xxx series of Gateway laptops, I played with one at Best Buy for a good 45 minutes, poking, prodding, bending, grabbing, tweaking and generally looking for signs of shoddy build quality, and I'd say they're somewhere in between Acer and Asus in terms of sturdiness. Nowhere near business laptop levels of durability, but they aren't pieces of junk, either.

As much as I like Asus, I just can't deal with the aesthetics of their gaming line. They're just awful and ugly (and shiny... very shiny...), while the G73Jh is barely a laptop, it's so freaking enormous, even though it looks okay.