buy a nasty company like gateway. gateway 'was' a good company once but I have a pc in front of me now with a BIOS which will not switch off the onboard usb ports, Normally not a problem but in this case it is. The intel reference BIOS has had 4 updates gateway none (& no, due to gateways board setup I cannot use the reference BIOS).

My first PC that did cool things (like run windows 3.11 and have the internet) was a Gateway 2000. Was a cracking wee machine and the cow theme was a lot of fun! I only stopped using the keyboard from it a few months ago.

A wee look at Yahoo finance shows an interesting graph though year 2000 share price >$60 2007 sold at a premium of $1.90.

OUCH!

Chris

My first two PCs were from Gateway 2000 (as they used to be known). They were pretty good boxes and came with loads of decent software. In fact my parents have only just stopped using my old P3 purchased w-a-y back in 1999. I'm still using the Boston Acoustics sub and speakers from that PC.

The only down side was the support, it was bloody useless. Once I called up to get some Win 95 drivers, and after I'd sent them some floppies(!) I eventually got some pre-release beta drivers. In the meantime I'd managed to download some kosher ones. Another time I had a duff CD, and called to get a replacement. After being sent a CD I already had (not the duff one) and getting I passed round several departments I ended up telling some support muppet the part number of the CD ("...no you wouldn't have the part number..."). And lo a few days later I had my CD.

Not long after they pulled out of the UK (Europe as well I believe) and so I was left to build my next PC myself...

Why is a $710m price tag worth the wait over a $7bn offer 10 years earlier? I took the day off yesterday and, of course, need some re-training today but I just can't figure this one out. Compac's offer was (almost) ten times greater (and that's using the US version of a billion). Someone please explain...