April 19, 2024

Mind of Marcuzio

Performance tuning is the art of wasting ten days to save ten seconds.

Save yourself the trouble of getting ripped off. Don’t Buy a GATEWAY

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I was doing some work on my laptop the other night and all of a sudden my keyboard stops working, then not more than 3 seconds later it turns off. I tried turning it back on and nothing happened. I started standard troubleshooting(unplugged it, took out battery, etc) and I could get the light to flicker but it wouldn’t do anything else. I went online and found a couple hundred forum posts of people with the same problem with this model(Gateway Notebook M-6750). What I learned was that the problem lies with the motherboard going bad. The notebook has these clips in it for the removable panels on the bottom to sit on, and when it gets bumped, dropped, possible sneezed on , the plastic rivets that hold these clips in place break. The clips slide around on top of your motherboard and eventually with short it out when it touches the right combination of components. I had three loose clips in mine. I tried to call gateway and they have the most worthless and pointless phone system on the planet. It asked for my serial number of my laptop and I told it, then it said my laptop was out of warranty too bad so sad. Obviously thats my paraphrasing but after telling me it was out of warranty it gave me no options or info before hanging up on me. I then went to gethuman.com to try to figure out what combination would get me through to a person and it turns out there isnt one that anybody knew of. OK fine so gateway doesnt want to talk to me. I went online and found out they have a live chat option. I opened up Gateways live chat and started talking to a tech. First thing the guy asks me is for my serial number, which i gave him. I was then told that since my notebook was out of warranty they would give me one free support session to try to figure out the problem. I explained my issue and the guy told me that my only option was to send it in and pay $199 and it would be fixed. I was pissed at this point. I next tried the email route. I was told that under there “limited warranty” that i might qualify for repairs. What wouldnt be covered under this would be a cracked LCD, abuse, broken case, or spilled liquid. I was thrilled! I wrote back and told them that I didnt have those problems so I’d like to send it in and have it repaired. The guy emailed me back and asked for my info so he could open up a trouble ticket, then informed me that I’d have to pay $199 to have I fixed. So i can pay $199 to have it fixed or I can take advantage of their “limited warranty” and pay $199 and have it fixed. Gateway turned out to be a complete waste of time. They dont back their products and build shoddy crap. Save yourself the trouble and buy a Dell or something else. Just not a GATEWAY, Oh by the way ACER bought out GATEWAY so you might want to avoid them as well.

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