Gateway to Buy EMachines for $235 Million

Associated Press | January 30, 2004 | ELLIOT SPAGAT

[ambrose]

The market can be irrational both as to the upside (dotcom bubble) and to the downside as well (as your example illustrates).

[Gman]

I worked for SuperMac Technology in the mid '90s when we bought the first incarnation of eMachines: a Macintosh large screen manufacturer.

I hope that Gateway learns that you can't help a sinking rock by tying it to yourself...

[Helms]

What ever happened to Acer?

[Martin Tell]

I got an eMachine at Sam's (cheap) for my home office. It works fine. Can't say the same for my Gateway notebook (crap. now replaced with Averatec from Sam's (cheap and a good product)).

[TalBlack]

I have a pretty good idea why Gateway's fortunes are sagging: too many economies in the product. I have a gateway P4 2.26 Ghz 533 mhz 512k machine and it works fine with the stuff they sell with it but don't even think about getting any Pro audio going! MOTU 2408mk3 won't work with it, Echo Mia won't either neither will M-Audio midisport or midiman. Cubase MAY work but its hard to tell since nothing that works with it works! BUGGY AS HECK in the Audio dept. But the el-cheapo onboard sound works! They cut a corner somewhere as far as I'm concerned!

[Helms]

I have a 3 year old HP desktop which HP and Best Buy knew it had severe freezing problems and they swept the whole series of 8655C machines under a rug.Try rebooting 3/4 times a session on FR.

Since that time I have dumped the desktop and have been fine w/ a used Thinkpad T-20 w/ 14" LCD and a wireless router.

I won't buy HP again. I may never buy another desktop box again either. Laptops are currently cutting into desktop marketshare and for good reasons.

Its nifty having a computer on your lap and your legs in the up position as you relax on a recliner.

Its always different strokes for different folks.

[hchutch]

My first desktop computer was an e-Machines 433i. It was low-end, but did fine until this past November, when I got their top-line desktop.

Paid a lot less than I would have with some others, and I liked the quality. Hope the quality stays the same.

[Lael]

Impressive in the pc industry. I've heard emach. quality is much better than a few years ago.

I have a "Gateway GP6-450", rebuilt to a 300 Watt Power Supply, and a Powerleap replacement CPU, an Intel 1.2 GHz Tualatin.

Works well.

The next machine is an E-Monster 800 P III 800 MHZ, bought in 2001...a real piece of junk...until I learned that the Mobo was a Micro ATX form factor...and suddenly, I decided to "upgrade".

Purchased a Tower for $59 at Fry's. Came with a 350 Watt Power Supply, which replaced the miserable 120 Watt job on the original e- machine case.

Now, it was a two hour upgrade, and is as rock stable as any machine running Windoz ME [Actually, VERY stable, but not in Mac OS X class]. It is my favourite!

My last Machine is a SONY Vaio Digital Studio model running a P 4 1.2 GHz Celeron. It was purchased solely to run PC based Educational Software which incorporated Quicktime for Windows, after Microsoft dropped Pluggin support during its fight with Sun over JAVA.

I rarely use it, it is literally slower than the Gateway with the original Pentium II 450 MHz...as measured with digital stopwatches!

The Vaio runs Windows XP, loaded with Bloatware, which seems to reconfigure itself every few weeks.

My Significant Other uses it principly as a Word Processor, and as a machine for playing Hearts and Solitaire.

Next Machine WILL be a MAC!!

[q_an_a]

say good night Gracie! buying a pound dog to put in your kennel of show dogs will not make them better. if they spent 200 million on improving their product and service they might get 5% more market share but buying a dog company is the sign of a desperate man.