Man Smashes PC with Sledgehammer in Gateway Country Store

mozilla is sooo great. but i digress.

apple should post that as a news item or a major "switch campaign" article. hehe.

Next up, Gary Wilke vs. Tonya Harding wearing a cow suit.

Whoa, after posting that I saw on Todd's listening to "All of Me" from the album "Sensual Bedtime 2". All this PC smashing talk must have got him a little hot under the collar.

"Third rate Wintel boxes"? Can't we all just get along?

It amazes me that Mac users turn the other cheek when OS X crashes (and it does).

I think he was calling Gateway computers third rate Wintel boxes because they ARE third rate Wintel boxes. Has more to do with Gateway then with Windows.

Adam is right. If I was going to buy a Windows machine (shudder) there's no way in hell I'd buy a Gateway. Third rate.

I think Apple should post a story telling everyone not to shell out $3,000 for a Titanium as it will fall apart within a month. YES I HAVE A PRETTY TITANIUM and the USB port is dead and NO I did not abuse the computer I just simply pulled the mouse out. . Now the freaking keybord is imprinted on the screen. At least Gateway offers you a 1 year parts and labor warranty. You don't get crap from Apple. Apple computers are overrated. I'm about to go to an Apple store and smash my Titanium on one of those goober sales idiots heads. I thought it would be cool to switch but it is becoming a pain. I've owned 5 IBM Thinkpads not one lost any parts ever with the exception of a bad screen on my last one which was replaced by IBM within 4 days including free shipping. Can you all get a grip about the Macintosh it is WAY far from perfect.

As someone who used to work for Gateway, you'd be suprised (or rather, wouldn't be) how often we were asked to provide practical/creative methods of Computer Destruction.

But sorry, smashing your pc with a sledgehammer still pales in comparison to the man who pushed his out of his high rise office window on to the roof of the Country Store office below.

Oh, and I doubt it was a problem with the hardware, but I also doubt it was a problem with the OS. More than likely, he had to resort to calling Customer Support. Which is where his real problems would have begun.

Tech Support personnel at Gateway are expected to handle calls in about 8 minutes, which means, if it isn't a simple settings issue, then its a Format, or, if the Support Agent is pressed for time, writing zero's to the harddrive, and asking the client to call back to then re-partition, and then reload the ganked up OEM version of Windows. If you hate Windows as it is, you be appalled at the bastard spin-off's Compaq, Gateway, and HP ship out.

And even with Gateway's pretty cushy replacement warranty, getting a part approved for replacement, from an employee's standpoint, is like pulling teeth. I was once asked to have the client preform diagnostics on a monitor that literally burst into falmes earlier that morning, just to "make sure it was bad."
It's ridiculous.

as someone who has just finished working on a Gateway problem, their phone support is great, everything was solved within 30 minutes. the stores suck. I has working on a problem on an originally $4000 1999 laptop still under warranty. The system has been back 4 different times and the store finally refused to do any more work. This machine is a lemon, but as soon as the system is fixed, it's going on ebay...

I should add that this is my bosses machine and she is a compleat mac head, but had to buy a windows machine for school uses.....and it has been a hardware problem since day 1. she swapped this machine out for an iMac...