Quote:

Since the Gateway takeover, the Emachine lineup represents a very good value indeed.



This is where my information is likely out of date.

I was a Gateway employee in 2004 when the eMachine thing went down. We were told that Gateway purchased eMachine for the sole purpose of being able to leverage the retail stores into carrying Gateway computers along with the eMachines, using something dangerously close to blackmail in saying "Or we will pull the eMachines from your shelves completely." The Best Buy and Walmart type places did not want to lose the low price sales appeal of the eMachine, so they deferred to Gateway and made room. At that time, we were also told that the production of the eMachines would remain in Taiwan, as would the support.

This strategy allowed Gateway to close their retail stores and save the overhead that went with those stores. I was part of that overhead, though that has no bearing on this topic. I was not a fan of Gateway even when I worked for them. The point is that it has become homogenized to a point where sales kids in Best Buy are telling customers that eMachines are "made by Gateway". As of the last information I had, now out of date by 7 years, that is not accurate. They are OWNED by Gateway, but not produced by Gateway. That may be different now, but at that point in time, the correct analogy would be that while Chevy and Pontiac are both owned by GM, Chevy parts are not made at the Pontiac plant.

My thought is that as long as it says eMachine it is not a Gateway, and vice versa, and the last I knew of eMachine their support was still in Taiwan and close to impossible to reach. I tried to find contact information for them online once, and everything was web based with no phone numbers provided. I have not touched an eMachine since 1997, and I only owned one which I ended up throwing away, so I may be wrong on all of this due to the age of the knowledge.

Has their support improved?