Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/06/16/the_gateway_expandable_pc/

The Gateway expandable PC that isn't

Future proofing

By Linda Harrison

Posted in On-Prem, 16th June 1999 19:54 GMT

Gateway 2000 has earned itself a ticking off from the UK advertising regulator for claiming its G6-350 computer is "expandable". Gateway said the model’s 64MB 100MHz SDRAM was expandable to 768MB. However, the 256MB memory chips that were needed for this upgrade were not available in the UK. The Advertising Standards Authority decided the advert was misleading because it inferred customers could order the G6-30 with expanded memory or they could easily obtain and fit the chips themselves. The PC builder said the term "expandable" referred to future, not present, capabilities. Gateway was asked to remove the claim. Tiny Computers was chided by the ASA for claiming all its PCs were compatible with present and future software and hardware. During its "You can afford to think big at the Tiny sale," the company said its PCs had been certified by Microsoft as "PC98". This "futureproofed" the products, according to Tiny. The complainant said technology developed so quickly that to predict PCs’ future compatibility was impossible. Tiny agreed to amend the claim.