Gateway

Founded in 1985, Gateway's company's logo is the immediately identifiable cardboard box covered in Holstein cow spots. It started out as a direct order company, like the Dell Computer Corp. Its folksy image and reputation for excellent customer service helped it become a real presence in the home computer industry. They branched into global markets, and opened a bunch of Gateway Country computer stores around the United States.However, the dot-com bust proved difficult for Gateway, and they drifted for a while as they tried to get a grip on what their new identity should be. They pulled out of the international markets, and closed their Gateway Country stores. For a brief time they entered the arena of consumer electronics, making plasma screen televisions, cameras, and the like, but left soon after. The outlook began to improve again for Gateway, however, in January of 2004 when they purchased eMachines for about $234 million dollars. Today, they are again one of the more popular sources for direct order low-cost computers in the industry. However, they have now outsourced their customer service and tech support. Though their products tend to receive decent reviews, their consumer ratings on customer service have decreased now that they no longer run the services themselves. Nonetheless, many people love these products, claim to have never had a problem of any kind with either the equipment or the personnel, and plan to never, ever leave Gateway Country.