Gateway

Company Profile ( http://www.gateway.com/ )

Ted Waitt and Mike Hammond founded Gateway 2000 on September 5, 1985, on a farm outside Sioux City, Iowa. In 1998, it dropped the "2000" from its name and began to be called simply Gateway. It followed the Dell model of marketing laptop notebooks, and was successful as a direct sales company for notebooks. It created a niche for cheap notebooks and its major competitor was Dell. It created a Holstein cow mascot and opened up a chain of retail stores called Gateway Country Stores, mostly in suburban areas or United States. After the dot-com bust, Gateway struggled and reduced its number of stores, withdrew from international markets, and entered the consumer electronics business. However, these efforts were not successful and Gateway continued to lose market share. By April 1, 2004, Gateway decided to close down all stores and the last day of operations for the stores was April 9, 2004. The company Gateway, Inc., is headquartered in Irvine, California. It operates as online retailer of computer hardware. It employs approximately 1,800 people and for the fiscal year 2006, the revenue was $3.854 billion.

Pros And Cons

The ultraportable Gateway NX100X is less than an inch thick and is 3.2 pound in weight. It has a 3-cell battery and an extended optical drive. The display is 12.1-inch widescreen. A resolution of 1280 x 800 pixel packs information but when viewed at an angle a white background becomes grayish. For seeing a movie, an external DVD/CD-RW combo drive would be required. There are no dedicated volume or WiFi buttons, the Function key combos to control these tasks. Embedded wireless broadband is not there. TPM circuitry is also not there, but the casework is magnesium alloy. There is no fingerprint reader and the 3-cell battery delivers approximately 2 hours of backup. Longer-life battery cost extra. A 6-cell unit doubles the endurance while a 9-cell unit gives nearly 9 hours per charge. The pros are that it is affordable, has a sleek design, and has a good-looking widescreen display. The Gateway M255-E notebook computer measures 13.3 x 9.7 x 1.3 inches and weighs 5.5 pounds. It is ideal for home and office. This model has a full sized keyboard but the keys have a gritty UV coating, which adds durability to the keys but gives a dirty feel to the fingers. The touchpad has a generous scroll area. The right side has PC Card and SmartCard slots, two USB ports, and a FireWire port. The left side has two USB ports, S-Video, VGA, and dual-layer DVD burner. System-taxing tasks like watching a DVD and simultaneously running a virus scanning program yields a good result. The 6-cell battery lasts approximately 3.5 hours, which is just below average. There is no dedicated WiFi on/off switch; however, the radio can be toggled with a function key combo. Bluetooth is a plus point in this laptop. A three-year warranty is backed by just as many years of technical support. The dual-core performance is good, has multiple media card compatibility, and has a touchpad scrollbar. The graphics performance is poor. This laptop is an excellent buy for a business user.

Top Models

UltraPortable E-100M SB
Convertible Notebook M285-E SB
Ultimate Mobility M255-E SB
Dual-Core Mobility M465-E SB
Dual-Core Widescreen M685-E SB
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished M275
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished M280 Convertible Notebook
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished NX560 Notebook
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished M465
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished M275
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished Gateway 460
Remanufactured Gateway® Certified Refurbished M285 Convertible Notebook