Gateway makes a comeback as a budget PC brand

[rcmaehl]

Summary

In a blast from the past, Gateway has come out of the woodworks after being bought by Acer in 2007. Taking the same spot as a budget PC seller.

 

Quotes

Quote

Walmart is also selling two Gateway-branded Android tablets — an 8-incher for $69 and a 10-incher that Gateway says is $79 but is currently listed at $66.50. Both are powered by an A50 processorGateway, the major PC brand of the 1990s with the iconic cow-spotted logo, is back. Acer now owns the company and has decided to start selling Gateway-branded laptops again. As is often the case with Walmart-exclusive laptops, the main attraction is the price. On the most affordable end is the Gateway Ultra Thin series, which starts with a $179...laptop with an AMD A4, and spans up to a... model with a Core i5. There’s also a $199... touchscreen 2-in-1 available. The names aren’t very interesting, but they do come in a variety of fun colors, including purple, blue, green, and rose gold, as well as black. On the higher end is the Gateway Creators series, two 15.6-inch laptops meant for media editing and gaming. They do seem to have some decent specs. You can choose the $799 rig with a Ryzen 5 4600H and an Nvidia GTX 1650 GPU or a $999 model with a Core i5 and an RTX 2060. I would guess that’s at least partially because they don’t seem to have a lot of storage — only 256GB each. Walmart is also selling two Gateway-branded Android tablets — an 8-incher for $69 and a 10-incher that Gateway says is $79 but is currently listed at $66.50. Both are powered by an A50 processor.

 

My thoughts

Ah man, I remember Gateway fondly. My mother's first computer was a Gateway with a big CRT monitor, Windows 98(?), and a modem when I was just a kid. I remember getting my AOL account setup on it and playing AOL kids games. It's nice to see Acer is finally doing something with the brand. 

 

Sources

The Verge (quote source)

Walmart

[rcmaehl]

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I sure hope they actually do something unique with the brand and not following their old strategy of just diving into the Acer parts bin. When Gateway died, their machines were pretty much identical to an equivalent Acer minus the badge swap. The case looked the same, the boards looked the same, etc. 

 

Certainly a case of deja vu?

 

[dalekphalm]

At first I misread the title as "Gateway makes a comeback as a budget gaming brand" and I was like "Whaaa?"

 

But I think a lot of the older crowd here will actually have fond memories of Gateway PC's. While I never had one - we had a Compaq Presario but Gateway were very popular at the same time. With PC's like that, you could often get into gaming on the cheap - just drop in a GPU! This was before the days where you really even needed to upgrade your PSU, since GPU's didn't take that much power back then.

 

If they can deliver a quality product that's inexpensive, and can compete against the likes of Dell and Acer, then that wouldn't be the worst thing (Although I guess Acer still owns them - that's good, as it allows Acer to devote resources to designing a good product).

 

If this were a startup or an entirely new owner, I would be concerned about the viability of such an investment. But for Acer, this is simply another brand - they already own the infrastructure to design and build PC's. It's still a bit odd, since Acer already has budget PC's, but they could devote Gateway to the Budget space, and they could focus the Acer brand on higher quality products.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

It's still a bit odd, since Acer already has budget PC's, but they could devote Gateway to the Budget space, and they could focus the Acer brand on higher quality products.

If Acer wants to move their brand up market, this could be the perfect opportunity for them to drop the low end products from the Acer brand. They have shown over the years that they can make premium devices. The Aspire S7 being a notable one and the Predator line is starting to gain some traction. But I wonder if the Acer brand is too far gone? Will they be able to shake off that reputation of the cheap computer that had tons of bloatware and hardware configurations that'll make the machine obsolete within a few months? 

[rcmaehl]

21 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

At first I misread the title as "Gateway makes a comeback as a budget gaming brand" and I was like "Whaaa?"

I mean if they're successful enough we could see some Generally Great Gateway Gaming Gear

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

If Acer wants to move their brand up market, this could be the perfect opportunity for them to drop the low end products from the Acer brand. They have shown over the years that they can make premium devices. The Aspire S7 being a notable one and the Predator line is starting to gain some traction. But I wonder if the Acer brand is too far gone? Will they be able to shake off that reputation of the cheap computer that had tons of bloatware and hardware configurations that'll make the machine obsolete within a few months? 

Acer is not too far gone in general. They make some kickass "premium-light" laptops that are cheaper than the premium brands like XPS, etc, but also have better build quality than budget models.

 

And most people don't really know which PC brands are good or bad - not on the technical level that some of us do. I think the average person (which will be the target demographic) doesn't dislike Acer. They definitely don't share the reputation that the PC Enthusiast community has.

[poochyena]

betting on nostalgia i guess?
 

[RotoCoreOne]

That is a name I've not heard in a long time. First brands that I can remember recognizing were gateway and dell 

[Dietrichw]

I am still using a i5 2500U 17" Gateway laptop. It has a drive with Ubuntu in it currently, sometimes Linux is good to use for certain tasks.

[Deli]

Gateway? I seem to have some memory see those PCs in PC hardware shops when I's still in primary school. I probably was using a PC with Pentium D.

[NumLock21]

I still remember their commercial with them dairy cows and the box it comes with is the design of those cows, white with black blotches.

[Fatih19]

Walmart's been killing it in the laptop department, huh.

[White15gt]

Looks like they have some pretty decent options. To my untrained eyes, it looks like whoever the OEM for “Motile” branded laptops is/was, it’s the same here. Check out the Ryzen 3 gateway laptop for example. 
 

https://www.walmart.com/cp/gateway/8460364

[Jito463]

On 9/17/2020 at 7:09 PM, rcmaehl said:

Generally Great Gateway Gaming Gear

Oh no!  5G?!  GET IT AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh, wait.  There are 6 G's? *phew* Never mind, then.

[Mark Kaine]

On 9/18/2020 at 1:47 AM, dalekphalm said:

At first I misread the title as "Gateway makes a comeback as a budget gaming brand" and I was like "Whaaa?"

 

I read it as"Bill Gates makes a comeback as Microsoft leader"

I am disappoint! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[demonix00]

On 10/3/2020 at 1:40 PM, White15gt said:

Looks like they have some pretty decent options. To my untrained eyes, it looks like whoever the OEM for “Motile” branded laptops is/was, it’s the same here. Check out the Ryzen 3 gateway laptop for example. 
 

https://www.walmart.com/cp/gateway/8460364

This video explains what is happening, but the long and short of it is that this has nothing to do with acer or the actual gateway as another company has licensed the gateway brand from acer to be slapped onto generic no-brand laptops and tablets from China (also he managed to find that the company that imports the devices is also selling them under their own name).