What is the 10th Anniversary Club?

The 10th Anniversary Club was formed in October, 1995 by a group of computer enthusiasts who had purchased the "10th Anniversary System" Pentium 133 from Gateway 2000. The Club formed as a user group, to share information concerning similarly configured Gateway systems and to collectively work with Gateway 2000 to resolve problems common to many Club members. Since the Club was originally formed, the membership has expanded to include owners of the Holiday XL system and other similarly configured Gateway 2000 Pentium systems. It is an international group with about 500 members from the USA, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Australia and Indonesia. The Club has no affiliation with Gateway 2000, and does not provide technical support.

The mission of the 10th Anniversary Club evolved from the functions of a customary user-group (troubleshooting and mutual support) to focus on specific issues and problems many of the members experienced. The history of problems addressed by the club began with the cosmetic issue of lack of a 10th Anniversary Tower Case or special Anniversary "bezel" on some shipped systems, and went on to critical issues regarding components that seriously disappointed our expectations. Chief amongst these disappointments were the "hissing" ACS450 speakers and the "pausing" 6?X Wearnes CD-ROM drive. Even more upsetting to many was the realization that the Matrox video card was in fact an OEM "stripped-down" version of the retail Matrox MGA Millennium with severely limited upgrade capabilities. As each issue emerged, we have pressed for information from Gateway and put forth our arguments, and ultimately after months of persistence, we have seen most of these problems to acceptable resolutions. The details of each issue are covered on the component web pages available for review at this site.

We remain committed to advocating our rights as consumers and customers of Gateway. We will continue to insist that Gateway fulfill its commitments to us as customers. We will also continue to insist that Gateway extend to all its customers the benefits of "fixes," replacement parts, buyback offers, refunds, and other resolutions that Gateway has provided to us in response to the problems that we’ve defined. Likewise, we will continue to press for more honest advertising practices and full disclosure of the distinctions between the OEM versions of components sold by Gateway, and the retail ("shrink-wrapped") models. Ultimately, we do hope to maintain an active dialog amongst owners and Gateway technical staff regarding viable alternatives for upgrading our computers, including both CPU and component upgrade paths.

Stan Hoff
Honorary President of the 10th Anniversary Club

PS - Additional information about the 10th Anniversary Club can be found in the June, 1996 issue of PC World on pages 50 - 51. An online version of this article can be found at: http://www.pcworld.com/hardware/desktop_pcs/articles/jun96/1406p050.html

We have also received very favorable comments in an article published by InfoWorld. This article can be found at: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/foster/ef052697.htm

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Updated 1/1/98