Acer to murder Gateway brand

Acer is to kill off the Gateway branding on all its server and storage kit from Q1 2012, partially purging its multi-brand strategy. The Taiwanese giant blew $710m (£443m) on Gateway in 2007. But following a disastrous run for Gateway, which was positioned by its parent as a channel-only mid-market infrastructure player, the …

[Manu T]

great even more dribble from Acer is comming.

Acer, known for computercrap, are creating Acer Business. What should I imagine by that?

More crappy chinese junk?

Why don't these guys just go away. Sell their crap in China (and nowhere else). Let them deal with bad quality hardware and bad aftersales service.

I wouldn't mind spending a few more bucks for decent quality products. Perhaps Apple iMacs are indeed one way to look at "modern PC's". At least the aluminum trim and glass frontplate gives the preception of a quality build product.

This is definitly not the way I want IT to move forward. :-(

[Steven Raith]

Actually....

...I've been working with current Acer gear for a while now, and....it's alright.

Ok, it's not exactly Dell Precision level, but it's not Dell Precision prices.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the lack of hardware failure - I can remember about three to four years ago, you'd be chucking half of the twenty Acer Travelmates that were bought within two years.

I can honestly say I've not seen a proper buggered Acer from the last three years, certainly - they might only be 'adequate' but that's what you want in an office machine.

Steven R

[benzaholic]

Farewell Gateway

I remember Gateway from their old multipage spreads in Computer Shopper in the early 486 days.

I can't understand the attempt to position the brand as infrastructure, but I'm sad to see it go away.

[Gene Cash]

Not me

I remember them from the same 486 days when they refused to give us BIOS upgrades to fix a major HD compatibility issue. IIRC, this was back when this meant you got a stick of EPROMS to swap.

I thought they were a great match with Acer, Packard Bell, and the rest of the bottom-of-the-pond scum.

[Peter Mount]

Ah the old cow boxes

I remember Gateway from the mid-late '90's with their distinctive 'Cow Spot' boxes. Not seen/heard anything about them in years now.

[Bill Neal]

Gateway is dead!

Long live the Gateway!

I actually have an 8 year old Gateway with PC800 and a nice AGP card in it. still runs games great! ...as long as they run in XP. bought the thing for $20 (US) It is hard to beat that TCO

[Z80]

Mooooo!

Has anyone bought anything from Gateway in their most recent incarnation? I'm just wondering if they still ship stuff in the cow-pattern boxes? If not, I reckon that's where they've gone wrong.

[Stewart Cunningham]

My wifes 17" gaming laptop from 3 years ago has no cow pattern at all. I would have been put off too, but it was stupidly cheap and fast at the time (£700 compared to £2500 for the similarly priced and styled Dell XPS or Alienware). It's still going strong

[The Godfather]

They paid far more than they should have done for Gateway. I would have buried the name on day one.

[Anonymous Coward]

if mission critical hardware goes down the company goes down

That's why mission-critical hardware is not a PC and/or probably doesn't run Microsoft.

[Jay 2]

More Moooooo!

I had 2 boxes from Gateway. I recall they were very reliable and used to come with a fair swadge of hardware and software (like full-on Office for a start). Pity they decided to withdraw from the UK market though.

The only down side was that their support was terrible. Took me ages to get some W95 drivers out of them, and when they did come back (on floppies *I* had to send them!) they were pre-release ones and I'd managed to blag some proper ones from elsewhere. Another time one of the support CDs was duff and it took me ages to get a replacement. At one stage some support muppet clained I couldn't possibly know the part number, at which I read it off the disc to him...