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Re: Computer life-span...



My family are preparing to purchase a home computer for school
and work. We've read over a bunch of reports, Consumer Reports, and word
of mouth, and we've basically decided to go along with Gateway computers.
We've contacted the company several times to ask questions and the other
day we were asking about the warranty and seeing if there was a way to
extend the warranty longer than what is offered. The guy mentioned that
it wasn't possible to do that, plus we would have had received our
money's worth after 3 years.

I just tried putting more RAM and a bigger hard drive in a four year old
Gateway 2000 4DX-33. The BIOS didn't survive the update attempt and is
soldered to the motherboard, which also has video soldered to it as well.

I am not a Gateway fan nor am I likely to be. I'm not surprised at
Gateway's attitude towards repairs and warranty. I wish I could get the
HD and RAM into the IBM PS1 running weather instrumentation for 5+ years
continuously beside my Gateway paperweight.

On the other hand, if you want a tough, reliable machine built of battleship
armour and likely to survive a lightning strike, you can probably pick up
a used Commodore PET that still runs.

Caveat emptor and don't buy Gatway for the long run.

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu http://www.phy.nau.edu/~danmac/homepage.html