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I ordered a laptop from Gateway with XP Media on it. I received it yesterday and I am one pissed off customer.
It did have XP Media on it and it did work. Problem? Well, since I did not like all of the "crap:" that they also put on the hard drive, you know like AOL and such as that, I was just going to reformat and reinstall the OS and partition it the way I wanted. No can do. The idiot CD they sent me with the laptop was a recover cd and there was no way to partition or reformat. The only thing I could do was to reinstall what was already on the darn laptop. Ok, no problem and I went out and bought XP Home Edition full version and came home all ready to install it and reformat and then partition and all the way I wanted it. Could not do that either. Know why? Because the idiots at Gateway put a SATA hard drive in the laptop and XP would not recognize the hard drive. I tried talking to every person I could all morning today at Gateway. They just kept telling me that, "We can't and won't help you "downgrasde" your laptop". Then they just said that they did not understand why I was not able to install XP Home Edition and then proceeded to tell me how much better XP Media is than Home Edition, all the while never helping me with my problem. Tomorrow morning I go pick up the laptop from Best Buy Geeks because I had to pay $132.00 to get them to install my XP Home Edition and get the crap that Gateway put on the hard drive off of it. hey had to spend hours finding the right drivers an d then the XP drivers for the damn hard drive can only be installed via a floppy drive. I also had to buy an external floppy drive so I can reformat and reinstall in the future because of Gateway putting a SATA drive in when I aksed to not have one. Gateway also did not send me the OS software like they promised they would, just the idiot recover cd that does nothing but reinstall all of the crap I didn't want in the first place.
Bottom line, eventually I will have a laptop that I can use and that will be set up the way I want it to be but it has cost me a great deal of money on top of what I paid for the laptop. I just wanted to warn all of you about the problems with SATA drives and using XP Home Edition on them. Even the off the shelf XP Media would not work, just the XP Media that Gateway send out because of the way they set up the SATA drives.
I always hated Gateway. A few years back, I tried to get a military discount and was told I had all the time to think about which one to get. I called to order 3 days later and the guy said he would put the order in. I called to order and he never returned my calls. No other salesperson would deal with me. I contacted his manager and she did not call back either. I finally got a call 3 days later and he said the offer was made for the initial day that I called.
Needless to say, getting the Gateway was a problem and once they have your money, you are own your own, unfortunately.
Worst customer service in the business.
I ended up getting Dells (3 of them worth seven thousand dollars). Every colleague who wanted a Gateway, initially, was convinced otherwise by me. They bought Dells, also (10 people in all, including me). They lost a lot more than my business....
I bought my Gateway laptop in early 2005 because I was in a hurry and I needed a laptop for a contract job. So far I haven't had any problems with it, but, like Veiled Prophet said, I got a bunch of junk on the hard drive that I had no use for, so I uninstalled it.
All companies put crap on your laptop these days. The fact that its a Sata drive wouldnt be Gateways fault, they didnt expect you to downgrade. You can just uninstall AOL and whatnot if you want. I do.
Every company wants you to use the crap they want you to use. I have customers who get their Dell pre installed with a bunch of useless Google crap. We have to uninstall that.
Moral of the story, when you buy a pre packaged computer / laptop from any company, the first thing you need to do is uninstall the 'extras' you dont want before you actually get to 'use' the computer.
I have a Gateway laptop computer. I bought it in 2001 and it's our only computer and I use it all day long everyday. I've had no problems with it either.
All companies put crap on your laptop these days. The fact that its a Sata drive wouldnt be Gateways fault, they didnt expect you to downgrade. You can just uninstall AOL and whatnot if you want. I do.
Every company wants you to use the crap they want you to use. I have customers who get their Dell pre installed with a bunch of useless Google crap. We have to uninstall that.
Moral of the story, when you buy a pre packaged computer / laptop from any company, the first thing you need to do is uninstall the 'extras' you dont want before you actually get to 'use' the computer.
YES, they most certainly damn well did expect me to downgrade since I told them I didn't want a SATA drive and that I planned on using XP Home Edition. It is Gateway's fault because I told them what I wanted and what OS I wanted to use. They knew it and said that they would be sure to set it up the way I wanted. They did not and they .
BTW, was not able to delete the idiot McAfee stuff. I was able to delete the rest of the idiot stuff they put on. I have always done a reformat and a clean install of the OS when I have bought brand new computers to make sure to get off any possib le proppiatary (sp?) stuff that they like to install, like Gateway. They put stupid stuff of theirs like stuff for finding out any problems and such that is strictly Gateway. I don't need nor want that stuff. That is for people who are not able to figure out things on their computers. To me, they just take up space and memory for nothing. I am not a complete idiot when it comes to this stuff, though I might not know as much as many. I know what OS I llike and what I told them. They didn't do as they said they would, therefore breach of contract, verbal as it was. I used to build my own computers but I am new to laptops. In fact, the desktop I have is one I bought made for me and then I added the hard drives, video and sound cards and such that myself.
I have a Gateway laptop computer. I bought it in 2001 and it's our only computer and I use it all day long everyday. I've had no problems with it either.
I never said anything likje it would not work right. I said that they did not set the computer and with the hard drive I asked specifically for and they agreed to. It will work today because I was able to get the proper drivers and such for SATA hard drive to be able to install XP the way I like it. Also, the idiot recover disk they sent with it doesn't let you partition or reformat without puttting all of the idiot stuff you have to delete all again. It makes no sense to me for them to send stuff that a person does not want and specifically says they do not want.
I just had to get it off my chest about their bad sales stuff that they pout a customer through and the fact that they REFUSED to fix the problem for me, saying that it was not their fault that I wanted to supposedly downgrade, when in fact I consider it downgrading to make me use Vista or a hard drive I did not want or need.
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