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From: stevesa@microsoft.UUCP (Steve SALISBURY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Gateway 2000 [another positive vote]
Keywords: Gateway 2000
Message-ID: <58929@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 90 21:16:06 GMT
References: <1990Nov5.155752.6728@Solbourne.COM> <1990Nov5.190436.20695@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <5982@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: stevesa@microsoft.UUCP (Steve SALISBURY)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 32

> I'm having very bad luck with Gateway 2000.

I don't doubt that some people will have a bad experience with Gateway 2000.
I think any retailer will make some mistakes, and somebody will suffer from
those mistakes.

However, I want to put in my two cents as a satisfied customer.

A few weeks after I got my 386/33, which has always worked fine, I ordered a
second hard disk.  It was a half-height 3.5" drive in a cradle to make it fit
a 5.25" slot.  They forgot to send me the small railings to make it sit
properly in the drive slot, and when I phoned they were courteous and promptly
shipped me a new cradle, thinking that this was what I meant.  I phoned them
again and they sent me the right thing.  All very prompt and courteous ands
most importantly, FREE.

After a few weeks I ran NORTON Utilities v5.0 CALIBRATE on the disk and found
some of the early sectors were flakey, at least according to Norton.  I phoned
them and they shipped me a new hard disk with an RMA Number for the return of
the old disk.  I don't mind paying the return shipping for the old disk when
they sent the replacement FEDERAL EXPRESS!

As far as another user who complained about CPU performance, a 20 MHz 386
with RAM caching shouldn't out-perform a 25 MHz without it, although you
wouldn't expect the results that user is getting.  Very puzzling.

I compared some CPU benchmarks on my Gateway 386/33 versus a Compaq 386/33
and it was less than 2% slower than the Compaq.  That's pretty darn good!
My 386/33 has a CPU RAM cache plus also has 8 MB.  Maybe that also helps.

Steve Salisbury
Redmond, Washington, USA