The Decline of Gateway...What Happened?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 тра 2021
- Talking about the decline of what was once one of the largest computer makers.
*Note: This video was created in March of 2019.
To submit ideas and vote on future topics:
companymanideas.com
Patreon: / companyman
Twitter: / mikecompany17
A very special thanks to this wonderful group of Patrons:
Tyrone Cowan, Ken, Ronnie Cheng, Eric Shapley, PleaseUseWisely, Michael Sawyer, Astra, Cervidian, Brooks Sparling, Brian Smith, Huperzia Selago, Ahmad, Jesse Long, Robert T Kirton, milkshake, Brandon L, Jon, Christian & Penny Gray, Emerald Computers - Jason Dragon, Dylan Kinnard, Brett Walton, Dominique Dugas, Nicholas Murphy, Peter Wesselius, Tristan Williams, Meow Wolf, Amy Westacott, MyNameIsKir, Jimmy1985, Stewart Tritapoe, Sondre Grimsmo Sinnes, Chris Lion-Transler, Sirpoptart.
Company Declines:
Kmart: • The Decline of Kmart.....
Blockbuster: • The Decline of Blockbu...
RadioShack: • The Decline of RadioSh...
Solo Cups: • The Decline of Solo......
Toys "R" Us: • The Decline of Toys R ...
hhgregg: • The Decline of hhgregg...
Pan Am: • The Decline of Pan Am....
ESPN: • The Decline of ESPN......
Gibson: • The Decline of Gibson....
iHeartMedia: • The Decline of iHeartM...
Bon-Ton: • The Decline of Bon-Ton...
Kodak: • The Decline of Kodak.....
General Electric: • The Decline of General...
Woolworth: • The Decline of Woolwor...
Dell: • The Decline of Dell......
Sears: • The Decline of Sears.....
Payless: • The Decline of Payless...
Hostess: • The Decline of Hostess...
Redbox: • The Decline of Redbox....
Nokia: • The Decline of Nokia.....
JCPenney: • The Decline of JCPenne...
Quiznos: • The Decline of Quiznos...
GameStop: • The Decline of GameSto...
NASCAR: • The Decline of NASCAR....
Shopko: • The Decline of Shopko....
MoviePass: • The Decline of MoviePa...
Reebok: • The Decline of Reebok....
The Gap: • The Decline of The Gap...
Pier 1 Imports: • The Decline of Pier 1 ...
Sbarro: • The Decline of Sbarro....
AOL: • The Decline of AOL...W...
Long John Silver's: • The Decline of Long Jo...
Chuck E. Cheese's: • The Decline of Chuck E...
GNC: • The Decline of GNC...W...
Hertz: • The Decline of Hertz.....
Steak 'n Shake: • The Decline of Steak '...
CiCi's Pizza: • The Decline of CiCi's ...
Boston Market: • The Decline of Boston ...
Yahoo: • The Decline of Yahoo!....
Montgomery Ward: • The Decline of Montgom...
Fry's Electronics: • The Decline of Fry's E...
Souplantation: • The Decline of Souplan...
______________________________
Website created by - fullertonmedia.com
Intro Made By - / @jombo1
My grandma won a gateway from a McDonald’s Disney game and my mom bought it from her, and it literally changed her life. She taught herself how to use it, got dial up internet, and enrolled in college. Now she works in HR for Walgreens in Illinois about to retire soon.
That is straight up heartwarming.
it's always nice to hear about technology improving someone's life
Awwwww
HR is the Karen of the business world.
@@michaelsmith5769 This is from her linked in page.
1. 1997 - 1999 Bachelor Of Arts in Management, Communications @ Concordia University - Wisconsin
2. Masters in Human Resources, Human Resources Management @ Keller Graduate School of Management
3. Her Exact Position is 'Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist'
4. The Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist will be responsible for identifying, attracting, and sourcing qualified talent using different niche channels and social media outlets.
5. Integrity, a positive attitude, creativity, and collaboration will be key to your success in this role.
Seeing a Cow Box on your porch was the happiest thing EVER, back in the day.
And nobody would try to steal it back then!! (Ok not quite true, but less likely!)
Seing a real cow walk'n the hood is even better🐐🤣
😂😂😂Agreed,I Still Have My Astro In The Box In The Garage😂
I was preteen when we got ours. I had no idea what this was. It just showed up one day.
@@PafMedic no way man lol do you really
Another funny thing is the boxes outlasted the computers. People thought the boxes were cool, so they held onto them. They were still around long after the computer was dead and scrapped out. I help a friend of mine move about five years ago and they still had stuff in a Gateway box in the attic. Lol
I will never forget getting my first computer as a kid back in 1999, tearing off the wrapping paper and seeing these huge boxes with cow prints on them. Good memories.
I remember fall 1988 when I set up my new Gateway 386. My college roommate was stunned, “Wow, it’s got a 65 megabyte hard drive!? You’ll never fill that up.”
Don't leave us hanging. Did you ever fill the 65MB hard drive?
@@mida8261 Only with the finest ASCII porn Usenet had to offer.
*cries in 2 terrabyte ssd today with no space left* 😭
65MB was big back then, but now that is just small compared to what we've had now
I got my Gateway in 1995 (it was a big decision whether to go with the less expensive 486 or the newer Pentium), and it had this massive 1 GB drive. I thought I would never need the 'delete' key again. It was such a huge upgrade from my old 286 machine with the 40 MB Seagate drive that I was constantly having to remove files from as it was completely full. Funny how that works.
I worked for Gateway in their golden years and it was a fun and exciting place to work at. Every time Gateway sold a 1,000,000 units we had a pizza party. We had lots of pizza parties.
typical, company makes millions and tosses you crumbs...
Yeah, but not as much fun as the Xmas parties...until we couldn't have them any longer.
@@thefatmanreacts1223
Sounds like stories I've heard of people that worked at GameStop in their hay day.
I think for the most part days like those are long gone now. And I mean that at basically every job.
@@JohnDoe-kv3kd Indeed. My mother's company used to throw mega parties that lasted for days back then, up until the late 90's but then they had to stop because they couldn't afford them any longer. They are still standing but it is not the same any longer.
What site did you work at? I did Tech Support in Kansas City from 1995-1997. It was an awesome company to work for at it's peak. Somewhat decent insurance, profit sharing, and pretty decent pay for the time.
I worked in Sales and Support at Gateway. I remember when we were treated like family. We always had a great time until we were turned into corporate numbers in the year 2000. That was the year everyone who worked for Gateway saw the writing on the wall. We all wanted to eat Dell for lunch, then changed our tune to directing customers to Dell. I loved the company up until it moved to California, and I hated what it had become. A shame. Treat your employees right, and you will always get returning customers.
I used to work in their tech support in the late 90s. When I started, the focus was on what they called First-Time Resolution. The idea was for a technician to stick with the customer until the issue was solved, regardless of the time required. If multiple calls were needed, the tech would schedule a time to call the customer back. This level of service was Gateway's big selling point, and it differentiated Gateway from the sea of other PC clone manufacturers in the mid 90s. Most people were still buying their first PCs back then and didn't know much about them. This, coupled with the fact that Windows 9x were steamy piles of shit in terms of reliability meant consumers really needed that level of support from the company. In those days, Gateway's reputation for good tech support was second only to Dell's.
Then, in 1998, Gateway began to shift the focus of its tech support to demand higher call turnover. It opened a bunch of overseas call centers, staffed by poorly-trained contractors instead of internal employees. It demanded that ALL tech support reps stick to a maximum 10-minute call time, regardless of the issue. And they enforced that call time by routinely firing the reps with the worst numbers. This obviously caused the quality of our support to plummet. Assuming we didn't just flat-out hang up on the customer if the call went too long, we'd do at most three troubleshooting steps with them on the phone... with the third step being a format of their hard drive. After the format started, we'd tell them to call back when it finished. The next lucky rep would then start them on a reimage of the OS from the recovery CD, and tell them to call back again if they still had problems, which most did. If anyone had any real gripes with this service model, we'd either direct them to customer service or to the paid "advance tier" of troubleshooting.
This shift in technical support caused Gateway's reputation to absolutely tank. In one year we went from second-best rated in the industry behind Dell to worse than Packard Bell--and that is saying something! Shortly after that survey came out, they fired some VP of technical support, presumably the moron who instituted the new policies in the first place. By 1999, the new VP had come up with a brilliant new strategy for tech support that they called "First Call esolution." The tech assigned to the call would once again work with the customer until the issue was resolved, although we now had to follow the steps documented in their troubleshooting intranet system, called The Source. The idea was that they could hire less-experienced techs for less money, and just have them follow a script. And boy, there were consequences if we didn't: Even if we knew what the issue was and could easily skip right to the solution, if we didn't follow the steps in that script, we'd get either reprimanded or fired.
I quit Gateway in late 1999, just as the eMachines buyout was happening, Gateway started selling the worst AIO PCs on the market, and Windows Me dropped like a wet turd. I found out a few months later that they'd shuttered the entire call center and laid every US tech support worker off. So that was the end of Gateway as I knew it. For a few precious years, the culture was at least decent. But man, it went toxic fast, and it never recovered.
Invalid data in CMOS, lord the Siebel move from the original CRM was a nightmare. Those customers who had lifetime support were forgotten in the new tools. Vantive had more help than Siebel, lucky for me I could troubleshoot blind.
Very interesting story. Thanks for sharing. I can't say that I'm surprised by the sequence there, but very sad.
Can confirm, I worked at a Country Store for a little over 3 years.
Sounds very much like my Packard Bell experiences as a tech support minion.
The "2000" part of "Gateway 2000" turned out to be prophetic of the year the company would peak.
Yeah, but unless the founders were super greedy, that isn't a bad run. Probably made a lot of money, too. According to Wikipedia, the founder is worth over 4 billion, and he's 58, so he has more than enough money then he will ever need. He probably couldn't care less the company died.
@@Winterascent
I mean I love how he came back in 01-02 only to completely abandon ship for good in 03.
When the guy who started the company and made it what it was can't right the ship and knows it's doomed you know it's all downhill from there.
2000 was the year we bought a Gateway, our first home computer. Remember how excited we were when those big "cowhide" boxes were delivered!
And that annoying phone modem whine!
2000. That about the same time hp went to China to assemble PCs. 2000 also was the year I went driving a forklift after fixing PCs was longer a good thing.
People running around with the ultimate satisfaction of buying a Gateway 2000 in the year 2000.
The Computer History Museum needs a clean Gateway Computer box for their nostalgic section.
Alas, there aren’t any left that haven’t been part of a fort :(
They got one
There's one in the Gateway section of the Sioux City Public Museum.
@@LeoRex13 I have a working gateway PC from 2000 and the box it came in.
I probably have one in my attic.
Out of all the pre-built PCs I had in the 90s and early 2000s, Gateway was my favorite. The hardware was reliable and solid.
Still is. I've never had any issues with any of my Gateway's. I just bought a mid-level Essential series tower and fully restored it. It needed nothing other than a dusting and I put the original drive bays back in that had been replaced by aftermarket junk. It works just the same as I remember it, clunky hard drive noises and all.
They were Noisy and clunky.
My first computer was a gateway from 98. The cow logo had me confused for so long.
One of their first AMD lines had a 90W power supply. The Winmodem kept rebooting the computer whenever the user tried to use it. Their "Destination" HTPC used a hard to read CRT.
I'm still using a gateway 2009 laptop and when it breaks ill get a 2012 model from gateway
I still use the Cow mousepad which came with my first Gateway. The PC still sits in the shed in case Win95 makes a comeback. Great computer and great company.
like how i w ugly shirts are making a comeback?
I am using a Gateway2000 mouse pad right now. I still like their motto "You've got a friend in the business". Sure can't say that about Dell, can you?
I was cleaning up today and found my Gateway mouse pad after like 15 years. Lead me to this video.
Please don't store vintage pc's in a shed. It's not good for vintage electronics. You will be lucky if it still works being exposed to the elements.
Someone needs to boot that thing in 2095
My uncle used to work for Gateway and he even gave me a free PC because he had multiple computers, I had a Gateway 2000 that had lots of PC games on it!
The tons of games were always a plus when comparing systems.
@@GreenAppelPie because lot of games worked well on it, it had big PC games included, that’s why compatible games is why those systems sell.
Idk if my uncle worked at gateway or not he might have, but I remember mine having a lot towers too and passing me one down when the hdd on my old machine died. My grandma handed us down a gateway and a Compaq a long time ago too. They were always great until the hdd died. I didn't know jack shit about computers back then and my parents didn't know much more, but we figured stuff out eventually... sometimes after multiple trips to CompUSA lol
@@ZachariaZuehlke I used to get a used computer as a secondary PC because he didn’t have room for it, and the tower just needed a new HDD because he took it out since the company removed them once they stop using them.
My parents had a cow-patterned Gateway mousepad and I always wondered what Gateway was supposed to be.
"My parents..." Thanks, you just made me feel really old 😆
Sorry for your loss.
@@Deathington. it's ok
Just as I read this... where is my old Gateway mousepad anyway? 😄
I'm still using mine!
I no longer have my Gateway computer, but the speakers I'm listening through right now are from that Gateway computer.
My brother worked for a gateway store when I was really young and every time I saw the cow print it immediately made me think of him. He's passed since but every time I see the gateway logo it brings back good memories. If they ever come back in to production I think is pick one up just for the nostalgia
They are still in production but are low budget and super slow since Acer prefers selling there Acer brand laptops compared to Gateway
People used to be proud of putting their Gateway boxes out with the garbage and having their neighbors see them in envy.
Not to mention the neighborhood burglars.
@@lironmtnranch4765 LOL! ;-)
These are the same people who post pics on social media of all the expensive stuff they receive for Christmas and can’t believe it when their homes are burglarized. You can’t fix stupid.
@@sardonicus76 pretty dumb comment
E-machines. I remember walking right past their store displays dozens of times. Never stopping.
1980s - guy starts company using direct sales to cut out the cost of having to have storefronts and middlemen
2000s - same guy creates a bunch of expensive storefronts and middlemen
Lol! Nailed it. And then sells out to the CA Tech Valley culture.
@@jasonbourneistreadstone At least he admits in hindsight that was a mistake.
When The Company Guy got to that part of the video, I immediately thought "That's where they had started messing up." It was an unnecessary move that cut into profits. They should've stuck with the direct to customer process. Unfortunately the desire to acquire even more money in a quicker manner, despite their already major successes, clouded their judgment.
Moving to California definitely didn't help either. I can't imagine the jump in taxes that they had to deal with regarding that move. That also cut into profits besides having chairmen from there who put short term financial goals over long term.
Went to Gateway Store, cash in hand to buy one. I was ignored by the staff showing off features to people with no intent to buy. No Gateway for me!
@@Donaldopato customer service is everything
I grew up in Sioux City, next to North Sioux SD, where they were based out of. Thousands of people lost their jobs/careers at Gateway in the recession, near the Acer acquisition. (including my mom.) My friend is also the daughter of cofounder Mike, who before he died, was not well-liked in the area or company. The downfall of Gateway is very personal and was life-changing to thousands of people in Northwest Iowa. :(
Oracle did that to my father as well. Crazy how when you're just another asset to the business they can drop you and affect families with one decision, capitalism 🤷♂️
My eyes were popping out of their sockets when I saw that revenue growth in their early years. Sure, tech companies have the highest growth potentials but damn that was insane! It's a shame they fell almost as fast as they rose.
It was planned that way.
Most of the time you hear basements or garages but never a farm.
Kids today will never know how fast technology advanced during the mid 90's through the mid 2000's.
@@HuskyGamersUNITE lol Oh yes they will.
Quantum and biocomuputers are coming.
They will sh*t on silicon.
Right? I was all hepped up on IBD back then and the EPS data was eye popping. I think I made a lot more buying and holding some Dell for a year or two.
I remember teaching my mom how to double click on our first Gateway computer in the 90s. I still recall thinking "why is it in a cow box?"
To be honest it’s pretty genius they chose a cow box because it helped you associate a funny memory about your mother that you still remember to this day simply because the statement was heilarious.
emachines computers had a terrible reputation for being cheap, slow trash. They were widely mocked on the internet back in the day. Gateway acquiring them was a bad move for their already declining image.
For sure. I've made plenty of Emachine jokes in my time. But, I always preferred building on my own.
Same thing as when HP purchased Compaq
Like bro they were failing for a reason; nobody wants low quality trash
@@mitchellhorton9382 Compaq was good, silence.
@@Clay3613 bruh I had a Compaq presario, it was rubbish
@@luvadougla A 2007 model? The sempron 3600+ model I had wasn't so bad at the time even with widows Vista surprisingly. even had a spare Pcie 16x slot, and 1x slot along with 2 Pci.
Worked at a gateway factory after high-school, it was awesome till we had a meeting where they announced record profits, right afterwards they had another meeting where they called 200 names. I was one of them. We got laid off on the spot. Was so glad to watch that company burn.
The collapse of Gateway was a huge blow to the Sioux City area.
Between that and the stock yard going under Sioux City has really fallen off
My parents are still using their gateway desktop from 2010. That thing just keeps chugging along...
Is there an Earthlink disk in the cd-rom tray?
The laptops seem to be quite reliable too, still occasionally see them being sold used or sitting in garages
@@niles6159 they said 2010, not 1998
Yep. Pretty strong computers.
I remember their wacky ads they used to run. Then they decided to be all professional and it seemed they went off a cliff with the end of the wacky ads.
Oh, definitely.
I agree. The first Gateway PC I ever saw in use was in an office. I didn't know they were really consumer-focused until, well, this video! I saw a Gateway store near me back then, but I thought it was for business buyers. That focus turmoil was real!
@@eksortso I used to get their junk mail when I was running a business in Australia. I dont think I ever saw anything from them outside of that.
I lived the decline, I was a manger at the Lake Forest facility where we had ALR, our server manufacturing and our SMB sales center. You did it the main points. We should have closed the stores much sooner. As for laptops we were working on the first $1000. Laptop when we got the word we all lost our jobs. I was in escrow on my first house with a young family. It wrecked me for several years to get back on track. Decision by executives (greedy ones) effects hard working people.
I worked tech support there 92-93. It was a great place to work. Being a computer nerd, I was happy to be there. Everybody was young, lots of good ideas coming out, and the cafeteria was even great. lol
To me, when they went public is when things started going downhill. Instead of focusing on providing a great product for the customer it became "cut corners to give back to the investors."
this is always the case. Company's lose sight of what made them wealthy in the first place. It certainly wasn't the investors that didn't show up to care until a company was ripe for fleecing. I always think to myself : "So you managed to have a billion dollar sale revenue year, and you want to CHANGE what you are doing?" it boggles the mind.
Gateway PCs was very popular for a time in the Netherlands because of that cow pattern.
I’ll never forget those cow computers, always my favorite
Yea, I never threw away the box because it looked so cool. I still haven't it up in my attic and occasionally go up there and play with it when I get depressed.
Luckily they're still making laptops
@@niles6159 Well, that took a dark turn. You...you take care of yourself...
I had a Gateway computer. Bought it through the local Gateway store and was very happy with it. Your video shows, like so many others that you’ve made, that the demise of the company can be laid at the feet of poor management decisions, not an issue with the quality of their product. I’m amazed at how so many good brands go down the tubes by over expansion, over leveraging, and just plain stupid management decisions.
My first pc was a Gateway. It was a work horse, originally intended for home use, but eventually was promoted to the main PC in my photography business. Never once had to call support. Still have the cow boxes!
The irony is, I just saw a brand new Gateway laptop for sale in Walmart yesterday and had to do a double-take. I thought the brand was long dead. I had no idea they were bought out by Acer.
They are rebranded Evoo laptops.
Yeah, too bad they're just rebranded crap.
I know! I saw one at my Walmart and did a double take too. I was like yes! Finally acer is doing something with them!
@@Gatorade69 A lot of them aren't crap though? IIRC, didn't LTT do a video on just how competitive one of those were? Sure, they aren't the best quality, but they're fairly good budget laptops.
@@DragonEdge10 I mean I haven't used one personally but from the reviews I have seen people complained about them. Search for reviews on Evoo laptops as they are the same thing. They're crappy enough that not even Acer wants to brand them as Acer but they are pretty affordable.
My aunt still has a Gateway and still uses it as her primary computer, unironically cows are her fav animal too
Cows are the best!!
She must eat a lot of Chick Fil A
Is it on Linux or what?
I think you used unironic wrong there. But it sounded cool... Which is all anyone cares about anymore anyway 👍.
I still have a 4DX-33V that I would still use if I could find the set up specs.
Oh, boy, does this bring back some memories...... I worked for GW for a number of years - first in a tech support call center, and from there, as a technician in one of those "Country Stores." It was quite an experience, but ended when the decline began, and they started closing the stores. Had some good times there...
I worked at the main plant in 2000 for about two weeks as a consultant. Surreal experience and fun to look on the wall of the original office with adds. I saw a forklift go by and had what I estimated to be $2M worth of RAM chips.
Gateway's Cow logo aesthetic is what makes it unique, I really like it.
It gave a rather dull product distinct branding; genius!
Oh it reminds you of a cow! Slow and dumb! By the way I owned a few gateways.
cow logo got associated with a nut job
Idk i like the art style of the branding, late 90s cow box drawing
Unlike the company itself and their products, the Gateway branding and aesthetic seems to have stood the test of time. It still looks really nice to this day.
Santa got me a gateway computer in 98. All I wanted was a computer and asked Santa more than once that year. Seeing that cow box in my living room is one of my clearest and best Christmas memories
🥺 Aw! That’s awesome. What a sweet memory. How old were you at the time?
I also got a computer in 1998 for Christmas! Mine was a Compaq though
My parents bought a Gateway for us to use. I mainly used it for certain games and school work. And boy do i regret getting a Gateway. Ours had a bad floppy drive(Iomega), a bad video card(Generic brand), bad fan, decent CD-ROM drive, and a bad hard drive. The only miracle that happened was the original motherboard never needed replacing in the 11 years we had it. We bought a HP tower drive. This past April, it turned 10 years old. It runs good
Wait Santa didn't wrap it? It's still super cool Christmas memory
@@sabrina.natalie he was 37 at the time
The demo store concept was such a good idea for the time. Before my parents bought one around 2000, we were wowed by the graphics in the games on demo and you could really see yourself owning one from playing it. As a kid, these stores felt like going to a car dealership and getting to do burnouts on anything the lot had before you purchased anything
I worked at Gateway Country in 1998 as a salesman. It was a booming and prosperous time. We can easily beat the local vendors at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. because their stock was older hardware and Gateway was custom ordered. The margins on PCs quickly erorded because of so much competition and agree that there should have been more focs on laptops as opposed to WebTv, Plasma TVs, and other electronics.
As a former Gateway employee, I can tell you the environment working there was amazing. Then, the move to Cali and we could all tell a difference was coming. We went from customer focused to dollar focused. I never met him, but friends told me about meeting Ted Waite at the Christmas party and he was super awesome (and got way too drunk and started inviting people on the street to come in). Ted, I wish it had all kept going. I still compare IT support systems to the one we had a Gateway and the environment was great. I never hated working there and I was started off in Queue 64 (unsolvable problems and mad customers).
I agree. Prior to Ted leaving the company and Weitzen taking over, Gateway was the best place I ever worked. Being a call center manager is not an easy job, no one calls you up to say their computer is running awesome and just wanted to wish us a good day. But Gateway knew how to take care of their employees.
Queue 64. Can we start a movement to make that a synonym for hell?
@@elizabethsohler6516 I would be down with that, but from my perspective we had a wide latitude on our calls: no call timer, no budget for factory authorized repairs, and we stayed on the call until the customer was happy, happy , happy, happy! I have multiple days were I only had a single call in a 10 hour day, because the call took so long. We stayed on the phone while the machine did a full, unconditional, error-checking defrag. Customers would set down the phone and come back after folding clothes or whatever and tell me, "We're at 23%.". Hours later we would finally have everything reinstalled just like it was from the factory AND then she said, "Can we set up my sewing machine now?" My reply, "Let's do it!" Once, I walked an "old lady" (self described) through changing a mother board out - over the phone - because her house was a 45 minute boat ride from Corpus Chrisi on an island out in the gulf. I could tell you tales of ghosts and goblins you might believe more than this, but the PC worked on the first boot-up - shocked the hell out of me too! Queue 64 had some rough spots, but I've had managers follow me to the bathroom at other call centers to check and see why I was in "After Call Work" and not at my desk. Comparatively, I had a blast at Queue 64 - only rule was make 'em happy! Although WOW, I got an education.
@@RickStewart1776 Maybe it should be s synonym for "spreading joy" instead !
what an odd name
You know today is a special day when Company Man uploads not one but *TWO* videos in one day!
Great day! Wont happen again until 2027 :(
I HAD STATE TESTING TODAY IT AINT SPECIAL 😭
2 banger vids to say the least
"*Note: This video was created in March of 2019."
Still nice that he finished and uploaded it
@@cakedon He always uploads old videos that were never uploaded at the time on channel anniversaries
As a kid I loved Gateway. I would ride my bike to their store regularly to play Rainbow Six on their demo computers. I leafletted my own house with demands for a Gateway. In the end my parents bought me a Dell (I knew more about computers than they did but they didn't believe it because I was a kid.) Despite that, I still have fond memories of Gateway. It's a nostalgia trip.
I used to work in I.T. Support - fixing these PCs tended to be a REAL challenge - what with having to do some sometimes crazy rejumpering on the motherboard plus a ton of lateral thinking etc. for other fixes. Loved it - HAPPY DAZE!
Our first family computer was a Gateway in 1998. We loved it.
I bought my first Gateway in 98 too.
Mario
Growing up, my family had a mid-90's gateway computer. Thing was built like an absolute tank and it came with a fantastic set of computer speakers with subwoofer that I used through college and graduate school. Sad to see the company fallen so far.
Altec Lansing, right? Those were some legit computer speakers
@@SlackActionBumble Yep that's it
@@stevee8318 I still have mine from 1995. Awesome.
@@SlackActionBumble LOL, Altec Lansing build some serious stuff before. The computer speaker only had the name on them not the awesome speakers
Mine came with a "Cow Pattern" mouse mat as well. Still got it !
I was pleased with the gateways my family got when I was a kid. My parents would let me (more or less) decide which model/components to add. I think I remember Gateway had video cards available with their computers, and a good sound system package. Eventually I learned how to build my own, but gateway was literally my gateway to becoming interested in PCs
This honestly explains a lot. At a kid, right around the fall of gateway, my parents gave me my first laptop which was a gateway and I remember my dad insisting that it was the best on the market. I only knew like hp. He is usually several years behind the times in what he deems good so this explains a lot. While there were design flaws, it was a good computer that lasted me like 7 years.
That's like cool!
Hold on, this is a two for one special
Just the way I like it
Yeah this is awesome.
Blue looking pretty sus
Ayo blue, you kinda sus
This was made back in march 2019
I remember my mom getting me a gateway computer back in 1999 I was super happy it actually lasted for 12 years before it broke
I miss those days I'll tell you that. My dad has had two HP computers in his life the first was a complete computer system: monitor, keyboard, mouse printer/scanner the whole kit from sometime in the early 2000s it lasted about 10 years then the hard drive failed.
In 2014 we got a brand new HP laptop. It was way cheaper than the original and was great except it constantly got hair in it from the cat/dust and would overheat and shut down. That aside it was otherwise fine until one day it just completely died. Turns out there was some display part or something that apparently is prone to just failing and it completely makes it unusable. I think at best we got about 3 years of use out of that before it failed. That's probably going to be the last time we get an HP laptop.
I had Gateway and it was a tough little computer. Last me many years before it died.
@@computersetc1123 Usually means the hard disk or something like that died.
@@computersetc1123 So true. I had towers that lasted me for more than 10 years because like you say, sometimes you just have to change or fix something simple, no need to buy a new tower.
Right now I have an HP with an older tower shell but updated on the inside components.
My 8 year old, $500 Gateway DX4870 computer is the best computer I ever purchased. And I bought upwards of 50 computers over the past ten years, mostly Dells (i.e., Optiplex 330, 360, 745, 755, 780, 790, 7010, 7020, 7040, 9020). To this day this Gateway is very reliable and runs like workhorse that never quits.
Gateway: 82, retired now, have probably owned 20 computers plus bought a hundred or so for companies I worked for. Gateway is the only computer company I really loved. Sales and service in their stores was fantastic. Hope the inventors came out OK.
Thanks for the article.
I worked at Gateway from 1998 to 2000 when all the changes took place. What was not mentioned was that most of the corporate people that were brought in at that time were from WorldCom which was also under investigation at the time which should have made Waitt second guess the moves that were being made. Gateway already had some issues including extreme nepotism which you might expect in small communities where they started but it continued into their factories and stores as they expanded. The Worldcom people tried to change the whole culture and even the selling system of the company requiring the salespeople to make cold calls to people who applied for a nonrelated credit card. Plus their advertising at the time pushed monthly payments but 99.9% of the people attracted to the ads did not qualify.
As a 33 year old who got his education in finance, this is about to answer both a professional curiosity and a childhood burning question at the same time. I'm excited.
I remember when having a Gateway computer was a major flex.
Yeah, the cow box was cool back in the 90s.
@@tomm1109 yup I had two of them, laptop for games and desktop for the internet my junior and senior years of highschool until I was 25
It was, although they weren’t as popular as Dell and HP, Gateway was seen to be a upper end brand.
Just stumbled across this, brought back a lot of memories, both good and bad. Was a senior bench tech at a Country Store for 5 years, lightning season was always a nightmare. Then there was the exploding capacitor debacle. What I think brought down the company was their forays into esoteric, before its time, tech, like the "internet appliance" that just ran AOL and in home power line ethernet. The TVs were like "wtf are we doing selling plasma displays?" I got out just as my shares were about to vest as they tanked and the stores closed nationwide, seems like it was providence that I was able to move on.
I owned several Gateway computers over a few years. They were so far ahead of everyone else for their time, absolutely great, and you could customize them online or over the phone when you ordered them, and they were simply beautiful machines. Very few cases today carry a brand identifying signature look like Gateway machines did.
My parents bought a Gateway system in 1994 and it was so awesome. They built the system based on our specific needs and really had over the top customer service. We got a free printer with a design program and went crazy printing flyers and such for my moms charity. Good times, good memories. 🐄
My first computer was a Gateway2000 in the early 90s. It was the P5-90, their top of the line model, with a super fast 90mhz Pentium processor, a huge ONE GIGABYTE hard drive, lightning fast 16MB of RAM, booming Altec Lansing speakers, a 3.5" floppy drive, CR-ROM drive for the included Microsoft Encarta, an SVGA monitor, and a state of the art 14.4k dial up modem. It was $3000, giant cow boxes and all. How times have changed.
I had a US Robotics 28.8K modem and used to dial BBS' and play text based RPG games... man the youth have it so lucky now.
My grandma bought a new Gateway in 95'. I played Doom on it. It was a quality machine. I'm sad that they lost their way, and disappeared. Thank you.
The first desktop computer my family had was a Gateway we bought in 2000. It was so cool to get to use a computer at that time, especially for me in primary school.
*”Bro, The last time I use the Gateway computer was back in 1996 before I hit puberty!”*
It was the gateway to discovering porn then?
Oh wait. Internet port in 96 wasn't that great.
Hey, that was before I hit puberty too!
It's 2021 and this guy is still looking forward to puberty...
@Mcillsonn ... ... 🤯
Day gets so much better when a decline of vid comes out
Schadenfreude
Facts
Maybe it was because of the San Diego thing and their short term goals shift but Gateway computers became just another over price machine and couldn't complete with all the cheaper brands out there.
I bought Gateway PCs for the office in 1991. They were great. You configured the PC exactly they way you wanted it and it showed up a short time later. They worked and were blazingly fast at the time and the price was right. They actually assembled them in a barn.
Then they just sort of faded into history like so many others.
Thank you for putting all of this together; very informative.
First desktop I ever bought was a Gateway. They had an easy build your own PC option that a lot of guys in my barracks got on with
I remember in 1997 my parents took me to the Gateway store. I was so fascinated with computers as such a young child.
I went to the Gateway store several times, and never had a sales associate even say hello.
I remember years ago my gateway computer was late. I received the box with a gateway mug, and hot chocolate and a letter of apology. My computer arrived. About a week later.
I was born in '82 and remember wanting a Gateway computer so bad simply because of the marketing and the cow print box. My parents ended up buying Compaq Presario which I spent many many hours on lol
As a former employee when ted stepped down and Ahole Jeff came on board everything became statistics and numbers and they pissed away the customer base on top of the tech crash they just could not recover I was there in KC from 98 to the end of 02 good video!
Don't forget they paid Office Max to setup in a section of their store and generated zero sales. Jeff was cooking the books for Wall Street too. The employees were all brilliant but the management were jerk off retards that they recruited from Best Buy and other retail stores.
You lasted that long? Miracle! You have the patience of a Saint. I heard they were running 150% turnover annually by the end of 99.
If you came in 98, you started when I came back. Ugh. Dark days.
@@xdarkridexDamn it was really that bad?! Crazy...
I had never really heard anyone talk about Gateway, but one of our storage boxes for our Christmas supplies is a n old gateway box with the cow print on it. Classic!
I haven’t thought about Gateway Computers in probably close to 20 years. But as soon as I saw the thumbnail it was like a video game moment where a core memory gets unlocked. Good stuff.
Love videos like this! So happy I found this channel. Just subscribed!
Their plan of opening retail stores is what sunk them. The stores added costs such as rent, payroll, rental insurance, etc. These overhead costs killed the razor thin margins that they were making.
Heh. You're close. The Country Store idea as it was hatched was a good one. There were supposed to be THREE. That's it. Then, well, read my comment above. Those guys took over and went crazy.
The story of why the first store in a suburb of Kansas City was delayed opening is a really funny one, though. I think the statute of limitations is passed... ;)
The biggest issue I saw with the stores is that nothing was in stock. My only experience with a gateway store, was that they had a particular modem / router combination unit on advertisement for a fantastic price. I went to our local store expecting to be able to walk out with it, after all, it's not a computer, it's a retail package.
Nope. "But we can help you order it online?"
Why the heck would I want them to help order it online, if I wanted to wait a week to receive it, I'd have ordered it myself online.
As you mentioned, the stores increased their expenses, but didn't create income. Even if they hold $15 headphones, etc, at least then they would have some income. You know, keep supplies that the online purchasers might have forgotten? Like Printer cables, USB Cables, Mice, Keyboards, etc.
But forcing everyone to order online, may have been the biggest issue, the delay allows for buyers remorse to set in.
My first pc was from a gateway store. I was in college and they were running a good promotion for students.
Probably should have stayed with selling directly by catalog. Sears originally had a small number of stores and warehouses and did well with the catalog business model during that time.
@@BenjaminSchollnick When my call center closed, I was fortunate to get a position managing the service centers in the Mid-Atlantic area. That was the one bonus to our customers. If they had a problem with their computer, they could bring it in and have it worked on that day or the next. Whereas other computer manufacturers would have them shipping it off and then waiting.
I did contract work at a Gateway warehouse in Irvine CA and when they were closing up shop they were just throwing new computers in the box into the dumpsters. It was sad to see. So many children/schools could have really used them.
Wow
Crazy waste of everything
I still remember those long support calls to Gateway. Remember one time asking the question, "what did you do before becoming a tech support" - answer was "I sold blue jeans. 6 weeks training and now I'm on the phone".
My mom had a Gateway for many years. I remember them being relatively easy for computer newbies to learn to use.
When I was an IT technician in the year 1999, a lot of the PCs that I served were Gateway 2000. My main computer today is a Gateway that I bought in the year 2013. I use it everyday. In fact I still have a Gateway laptop that I bought in the year 2005. I remember the boxes and the Gateway stores. Gateway was my favorite brand of PC for several years.
gateway laptops are a thing nowdays btw although gateway is owned by acer now. Very good low budget laptops for low prices.
I worked for Gateway, they announced that they where closing all their stores on April 1st, and a lot of us thought it was a joke.
Well damn, that must have been a mixed bag of emotions lol
Worst April fool's joke ever.
April fools! no but seriously you're fired.
I remember driving to Sioux City, SD to pick up my custom-built Gateway--my 1st PC-- in about 1997. We backed it up on floppys and used 28.8 dial-up. I soon got a 7 digit ICQ number and shortly after downloaded my 1st mp3 file ("I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?"). I built my first web page on Netscape Communicator.
Stores in high fraud districts of the country i e Los angeles and Brooklyn NY . Were notorious for employees walking out the backdoor with customers money . I worked for a contract provider . We heard alot of stories from customers.
I was an RSL at Gateway. We were all expecting it with Inoueye at the helm. I am shocked that you guys were surprised. Most of us already had jobs lined up on April 1st.
Thanks for this history lesson about Gateway. I owned a Gateway desktop computer in the mid-1990's. For it's time, it was a good workstation. At the time I lived in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio not far from a Gateway Training Center. They offered classes. Of course, the classes were a marketing tool, but so what? Sometime around 1999(?) I took a 4 hour intro to MS Access database creation class. My vague recollection is the seminar was free if you sat through a short presentation about the company. "More power too 'em", I say. And even if it did cost money, what I got out of that 4 hours was well worth it.
I actually had a customer surprised we still sold them at Walmart
They are just rebranded chinese pc machines.
Not the same it's just the name on cheap crap laptops
Didn't they just very recently come back?
For the price it's actually pretty good
@@Soljarag5 the only thing we ever have in stock that isn’t a chrome book
Being 53 years old I can honestly say I not only lived through GATEWAY dominance but I really wanted one of their systems. Never got one as I was living very poorly barely getting by but definitely was my dream system. Back then it really seemed they would never be toppled.
Most gateways were overpriced for what you were getting compared to dell or HP
54 and same sentiment. Poor college kid, but had big dreams of GW computer.
@@darrellbland1996that’s interesting. My impression at the time of them were that Dells and HP were junk. A good computer was a Gateway. I was kid and it was probably influenced by the school Dells always being hot trash.
My grandmother bought a Gateway Solo 9300 brand new fully loaded. Beautiful machine and incredible build quality. I still have it to this day
In 1999, I bought a new Gateway PC after checking one out at the Gateway store in Murray, Utah. The day I came home to the big cow-looking box was indeed a happy day. Their machines just worked.
This is one of the only channels I can watch while eating because nothing inappropriate pops up
Amen
Got my first Gateway in 1995 for a whopping $3k. I don't regret the computer / software skills I've obtained during that era. In reality, it was a very modest price for the education.
You got ripped off. The best computer I ever bought was in 1996 at a computer show in Ft Lauderdale. Generic Windows 95 from Bob's computers. It cost $1000 and came with color monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, a 1 GB hard drive, and worked until somebody gave me a Windows 2000 computer to use to write some code for his company. So it never actually died. It just got turned off.
Less than 1 class tuition.
I built my own. I could never afford three grand back then. My life has changed so much since then and I can not pretty much purchase anything I want. We all do what is best for us.
Got my first computer in 1998. It was a Gateway GP6-350 PC. It cost over 3K and came with a 6GB harddrive.
Love your channel man, great stuff! Yeah I remember Gateway. We were too poor to have a computer but my friend had one and it was a powerhouse
My two sons were just entering high school in the early 90's. We needed a new computer at the time. We bought the entire Gateway package including the top of the line monitor. If I remember correctly, we paid about $3800 delivered. When I got home from work one day, I saw a big stack of boxes on our front porch with the cow pattern. That was pretty exciting. I hooked everything up and it all worked! The only problem that developed was the CD reader wouldn't always open up to release the disk. A Gateway technician showed up and replaced the device. It was that simple. No hassle.
I remember those damn commercials, just hogging a portion of my brain but I never remembered the company. Now I can put that memory to rest.
I always thought Gateway failed because of the"dude, you're gettin a Dell." guy. LOL
I remember that crap 😅
I was thinking Dell would have something to do with their downfall as well! When I purchased my own laptop for the first time in 2008, it was a Dell and though those commercials had ended by then, I still kept quoting the commercial, lol.
And who knows, maybe Dell did have something to do with it. I had received a Dell flyer in the mail and as I'd just finished high school and was considering college, I wanted my own computer. I was able to customize much of the computer, but at that time, I was sold on just getting to choose the laptop color, lol (seriously, they need to bring that back! The rebranded "Gateway" laptops from Walmart have multiple color choices you can pick). I had forgotten about Gateway at the time because they weren't putting themselves at the forefront of people's minds, or else the nostalgia of the computer my family had when I was a child may have compelled me to check them out instead.
I bought a Gateway laptop in 1999 for college when I was starting the next year, complete with a ZIP drive, remember those? It was a great computer which never stopped working. Replaced the hard drive a few times and upgraded the RAM, but when I finally got rid of it 5 or so years ago it still booted up!
Sad that they are no longer but I have fond memories of them.
Zip drive FTW!!!!
In 2008 I got an old gateway computer as a gift from this one lady who lawn I mowed on weekends. It was an old xp machine but it help me learn alot about computers.
I had a Gateway that lasted a long time, it was a good computer.
I still have a model 2000 that came with Windows 95, but updated it to Win98. Still works.
Gateway and EMachines I remember seeing a lot of
Me too! It was one of the best computers I've ever bought! It also came with schematic diagrams and a user manual that would actually tell you what was inside the PC!
Heck yeah it was! I'm still using mine today!
I bought one in 1998. Still running.
This gave me a huge whiff of nostalgia playing Purble on my red gateway laptop
I remember making a trip to Gateway store when I'd heard they were going peculiar (2005-ish?) so that I could see what the fuss was about.
The software and accessory prices were uproariously random. The retail package of The Magic School Bus (2001) was *marked down* to something like $120 (while at the local shop I'd last visited offered it for $30), in range of with the various professional software suites and add-ons which were scattered on the same shelf/pedestal with prices randomly %300~%70 what I'd expected.
After I'd managed to get my laughing under control, bought one of those cow dolls ($10?) and some (extremely good quality/finish) phono(?)-cables.
I'm an Apple guy, and was the IT guy and computer teacher at an Apple-based elementary school in the 90s and early 2000. We also used PCs and I sorta considered Gateway the Apple of the PC world. I really liked them and bought a good many of their PCs for our school.
"Dude, you're getting a Dell!!"
That guy ended up being a coke head
@@atrainn yeah, but who doesn’t eventually?
When I was a kid, we kept that huge gateway box for storage of random paperwork for like 10 years, lol
I still have mine 😂😂🤣😂
@@imCryptoRixh same! still have the ol pentium 2 with windows 2000 as well, maybe i should fire it up and replay quake 2 one of these days
I'd love to hear more about computers and electronics from you!
I am typing this on a Gateway 2000 programmable keyboard that I still use with my home-built Ryzen-7 based home computer. This keyboard came with my first 486 system from Gateway which I got around 1993. I love the feel of the keys, and the extra function keys on the left that are programmable. You wouldn't believe how convenient it is to have an "Enter" key within reach of my left pinkie finger. Every time I upgrade my system I keep my keyboard. It hasn't let me down yet, even though some systems required an adapter, though my current motherboard allows the keyboard to plug in directly.
Our first computer was a Packard Bell, then we got a Gateway. Didn't know about the cow thing! Such a throwback haha.
Our first was a Packard Bell too. I lived printing banners on the dot matrix printer with Print Shop and playing the Carmen SanDiego games. Later on we got Sim City and that was awesome.