When to Buy an Acer or Gateway Product (or Any Product from Fry's Electronics: NEVER

Last October I purchased a new Gateway laptop with Windows 8 at the local Fry's Electronics.  It took my awhile to get used to using Windows 8, but I was very impressed at the much shorter boot times.

Working mostly from home and my 3 monitor desktop system, I only used this laptop a couple of dozen times before last week when it first had problems.  At first it would not boot up, then it would occasionally boot up and get frozen.  In my experience it looked to be a memory issue.

I took it back to Fry's where they said there is nothing they could do about it besides give me a toll free to the Gateway support center (somewhere in southern India).  The guy on the other line, did not speak good English and I had to repeat everything at least 2-3 times.  He did not want to listen to my RAM theory or the error messages that I saw - he insisted on making me reinstall Windows (I'm guessing they have A LOT of problems with these piece of crap Gateway computers running Windows 8).  There was no regard for my time or my data.

He said it would take 30-40 minutes to reinstall the operating system.  It took well over 5 hours and the computer still does not work right.  Only boots about half the time and will not connect to the internet at all - with wireless or by LAN.

So I called the Gateway support center (actually Acer support center) in India and was told that I have to send the computer to Texas (at my expense) and wait 7-10 business days to get it back.  Fun times.

 

The best part about this story is that it is the very last Gateway/Acer/Microsoft/Windows product I ever buy in my life - and will NEVER shop at Frys again.  They all cause way more pain than they are worth.  I'm about to become an Apple Fan Boy for life.  Hey Gateway, Microsoft and Fry's - here's my middle finger salute!

In the hindsite is great department, here is a post that says that 1/4 of all Gateway and Acer laptops fail within 3 years.  Make you feel better?  Nope - me either.

MicrosoftSucks.org also has a great deal of interesting reading.  Think they've pissed some people off?  Me too.

Fry's is a beyond worthless place to shop - unless you want to support a company that does not stand behind the products they sell - apparently because they sell CRAP.  Read more about how bad Fry's Sucks here.