The Truth About Gateway: In Black and White

By Chris Hunt and Matthew Richards

Images and Production Editors

ou've got a friend in the business.
This is Gateway 2000's familiar slogan -- one that appears in all types of media. Yet, it seems to me that Gateway is not the type of friend you would invite home to meet your parents. I DO NOT LIKE Gateway. I have known too many people who have been strangely hypnotized by those black and white cow boxes, deluded into believing that their computers were good machines or a good bargain.

There are three things that Gateway does not do well:

Price
Reliability
Performance

1)
Price. For some reason Gateway 2000 has earned a reputation as a company that builds computers at a relatively cheap price. Now, one may argue that Gateways are expensive compared to crappy computers like Packard Bells, but I hopped on the Internet and did a little comparative research of my own. I compared Gateway (www.gw2k.com) to two other companies that have comparable reputations: Quantex (www.quantex.com) and Dell (www.dell.com), and found the Gateways to be the most expensive of the three.

First, I priced out a typical high-end home computer. All three companies have websites where one can specify the components to put into the computer. So, I went ahead and designed the same computer on each site, and checked out the given price. Surprise, surprise, Gateway is the most expensive. The system I designed had the following specs:

200 mHx Intel Pentium II processor with MMX technology
64 MB of RAM
15.9 viewable monitor
4 GB hard drive
Graphics accelerator card with 4 MB memory
12/24 X CD-ROM
16 bit Sound Card
33.6 fax/modem

Here are the prices I was given:

Quantex: $1759
Dell: $2173
Gateway: $2244

Now, one can argue that the Dell computer is close in price to the Gateway model; however, Dell computers are judged to be far more reliable, as we shall see. For a comparison, I then priced a higher-end, more powerful system from the three companies. The system I looked at had the following components:

300 MHz Pentiumk II processor with MMX technology
64 mB RAM
18 viewable monitor
Graphics accelerator with 4 mB RAM
8.4 GB hard drive
12/24X CD-ROM
33.6 fax/modem
sound card with speakers

Here are the prices I was given:

Quantex: $2915
Dell: $3367
Gateway: $3517

2)
Reliability. Now, I am sure that Gateway fans who are reading this article are protesting my above statements. "But," they will argue, "those Gateway computers that cost more also come with Gateway's fabulous service." And I agree. Gateway does deserve its reputation as a company that will do all it can to fix problems that someone might have with their computer. Unfortunately, if you buy a Gateway you WILL need that service!

I came across an article in Consumer Reports September 1997 issue which compared several major computer manufacturers in terms of machine reliability. In this article, it was stated that 12% of Gateways core components (processor, hard drive, RAM etc.) had to be repaired! This was the second worst percentage for core components.

Even more telling was the number for peripherals (monitor, fax/modem, keyboard, CD-ROM etc.). In this area Gateway was by far the worst performer, with a whopping 20% or peripherals needing repair. When I shell out a couple thousand dollars for a computer, I really want the whole thing to work right.

(graph from Computer Shopper) 3)
Performance. This is the real nuts-and-bolts area of computer testing. The publication Computer Shopper catalogue regularly rates various computers in terms of speed and performance in various applications. In other words, one company's Pentium 200 may actually run significantly faster than another's.

In the March 1997 issue Computer Shopper tested various 200 MHz systems. Gateway was dead last in the Business Winstone 97 application test, and near the bottom of the heap in the High-End Winstone 97 application performance.

What's more, in a graph of Windows High-End Applications Performance Gateway came in third from last, and in the Windows Business Applications Performance graph Gateway is last, well behind the major manufacturers.

These statistics may seem confusing, but all it indicates to me is that Gateway systems do not perform competitively in comparison to other computers. If the Gateways were significantly more cost-efficient than the others I might understand, but we have already seen that Gateways are costly.

Finally, I must say that there is a chance that if you buy a Gateway you will be satisfied with your machine. You may contact me some day and rub my face in it. But, I wouldn't take the chance.