Before laying off 11,200 staff in March, 2003, Gateway sold PCs though a 300-strong national chain of brick and mortar shops. Five years on, it’s finally shuttering its last outlet – Gateway.com’s PC store – to focus on sales through other people’s. Loyally lowing fans can still get them through Best Buy, Newegg and the other usual suspects.
Gateway ends direct PC sales [Cnet]
Quite intentional, unfortunately.
Gateway built reliable machines back in the days when getting a 486 CPU was exciting. And those were nice machines. Except for the boxes. THOSE DAMNED COW BOXES!
I had my first “out of college” job as a PC support guy in a cubicle maze of an office, and coming through with a cart of “cow” boxes meant being bugged by every co-worker out there who thought they needed one sooner than the other guy.
Just brown box any corporate order folks. Believe me, we know what brand in there.
Anyone else think that Gateway was doomed from the start?
Seriously, Anyone who wants to advertise lightning fast computers, with a COW? Natures retarded fart factory?
Gateway still makes computers?
I never really clicked with gateway, (pardon the pun)I don’t even have a good reason for it either.
I bought a gateway back in their heyday and it was a fine pc – no better or worse than what was available elsewhere. Somehow they seemed not to be able to keep their image up and once money gets tight, all hell breaks loose. Anyhoo, sorry to see all those folks lose their jobs.
I worked at Gateway during college. I was in the engineering department, which meant I started running the new components through a compatibility matrix of various motherboards, OSes, etc. This was back when overclocking a Pentium Pro to 233 was pretty much the hottest machine you could ever hope to build.
(And I frequently played Diablo on it, come to think.)
I thought the Gateway stores were a bad idea of the brand, and it didn’t surprise that they closed- but getting rid of everything else is mildly saddening.
Since Gateway got bought by Acer it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Acer wants to get rid of the direct sales and put them in line with the rest of their brand. Still, kind of a sad milestone since I’m typing this on a Gateway laptop…
What kind of messed-up build is that? Running around with an army and using Bone Spirit?!? Blow some bodies up and be rid of King Moo-Moo! And for pity’s sake go raise your merc!
–but at least you’re not using a Hammerdin.
I thought Gateway built their brand with online and remote sales back in the early 90′s. It was news when they opened an actual store.
Isn’t this akin to Sears quitting the catalog business?
“Loyally lowing fans…”
Unintentional typo of the day?