Is Gateway Still Good?

By Cody Schug

 In a recent evaluation of North America’s major companies, Gateway was one of 13 that were said to be considered vulnerable to market declines, and even having failure as a possibility.  Weiss Ratings Inc. of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, is a rating agency that takes a look at over 9,000 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange.  Weiss gives various ratings ranging from an A, which is an excellent rating, to E which is “very weak.”  Gateway received an E+, which was the lowest of any of the 13 companies rated.  However, the highest rating received was a D+, so the companies weren’t too spread out.  Some of the other major companies in the rating include:  Earthlink, Lucent Technologies, United Global Comm., and Nortel Networks Corporation. 

            What would make Gateway such a weak company?  Their prices are competitive with any of the other major computer manufacturers.  Could it be their products?  On the campus of Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, each student is equipped with a Gateway 450 SX4 notebook computer.  The computers feature Intel Pentium 4 processors (1.6 GHz), 256 MB of RAM, and an 18.5 GB hard drive.  All these computers also have T1 wireless internet access, so the students can be online anywhere on campus. 

            “These things are great for student purposes as far as processing.  Basic internet surfing and Word documents, but as far as high end stuff goes they aren’t all they’re made out to be” says Wade Binneboese, Student Technological Assistant at 2fix, BVU’s computer maintenance center.  “The biggest problem with these things is the motherboard.  They are by far the most fallible component in the computers.”  Some students think the computers are just fine if you treat them correctly.  Ashley Hemer, freshman at Buena Vista, says she hasn’t had a single problem with her actual computer.  “One time I couldn’t log in to Novell for some reason, but that was a software problem, not the computer itself.”  She says if you take good care of it, there aren’t many problems. 

Some students beg to differ.  Freshman Jeff Jones is one of those students who at least somewhat agrees with the “very weak” rating given to Gateway by Weiss.  “I don’t think they were the best we could have gotten for our money.  We could have gotten better Dell’s or even IBM's that work faster and better then Gateway.”

Sophomore Annette Gerber remembers the heavy old black boxes that students had last year, before the coming of the new “silver bullets.”  “These new ones are so much lighter than the old ones used to be.”  She sits back and closes her eyes for a second.  “I have to think about this for a bit to remember back to what they were actually like.  I personally had more problems with the old one……but that could be because I dumped milk on it.  Overall, I think the new ones have more problems, and more people have to take them down to 2fix.”

Some students think that Gateway itself isn’t to blame, but do have some questions.  Lots of students want to know why these new computers get so hot.  Binneboese says there are two factors to the computers overheating like they do.  “Yeah, it is the processor being so fast, but mostly it’s just the way they are designed.  There just isn’t enough space to properly ventilate the computer.”  Other students noticed the lids warping or not fitting properly to the computer, but Binneboese says that’s just normal wear and tear and you’d have it with any brand of computer.