My grandma won a gateway from a McDonald’s Disney game and my mom bought it from her, and it literally changed her life. She taught herself how to use it, got dial up internet, and enrolled in college. Now she works in HR for Walgreens in Illinois about to retire soon.

Seeing a Cow Box on your porch was the happiest thing EVER, back in the day.

I no longer have my Gateway computer, but the speakers I'm listening through right now are from that Gateway computer.

I will never forget getting my first computer as a kid back in 1999, tearing off the wrapping paper and seeing these huge boxes with cow prints on them. Good memories.

emachines computers had a terrible reputation for being cheap, slow trash. They were widely mocked on the internet back in the day. Gateway acquiring them was a bad move for their already declining image.

I worked for Gateway in their golden years and it was a fun and exciting place to work at. Every time Gateway sold a 1,000,000 units we had a pizza party. We had lots of pizza parties.

Another funny thing is the boxes outlasted the computers. People thought the boxes were cool, so they held onto them. They were still around long after the computer was dead and scrapped out. I help a friend of mine move about five years ago and they still had stuff in a Gateway box in the attic. Lol

I still use the Cow mousepad which came with my first Gateway. The PC still sits in the shed in case Win95 makes a comeback. Great computer and great company.

The "2000" part of "Gateway 2000" turned out to be prophetic of the year the company would peak.

The irony is, I just saw a brand new Gateway laptop for sale in Walmart yesterday and had to do a double-take. I thought the brand was long dead. I had no idea they were bought out by Acer.

Out of all the pre-built PCs I had in the 90s and early 2000s, Gateway was my favorite. The hardware was reliable and solid.

I used to work in their tech support in the late 90s. When I started, the focus was on what they called First-Time Resolution. The idea was for a technician to stick with the customer until the issue was solved, regardless of the time required. If multiple calls were needed, the tech would schedule a time to call the customer back. This level of service was Gateway's big selling point, and it differentiated Gateway from the sea of other PC clone manufacturers in the mid 90s. Most people were still buying their first PCs back then and didn't know much about them. This, coupled with the fact that Windows 9x were steamy piles of shit in terms of reliability meant consumers really needed that level of support from the company. In those days, Gateway's reputation for good tech support was second only to Dell's. Then, in 1998, Gateway began to shift the focus of its tech support to demand higher call turnover. It opened a bunch of overseas call centers, staffed by poorly-trained contractors instead of internal employees. It demanded that ALL tech support reps stick to a maximum 10-minute call time, regardless of the issue. And they enforced that call time by routinely firing the reps with the worst numbers. This obviously caused the quality of our support to plummet. Assuming we didn't just flat-out hang up on the customer if the call went too long, we'd do at most three troubleshooting steps with them on the phone... with the third step being a format of their hard drive. After the format started, we'd tell them to call back when it finished. The next lucky rep would then start them on a reimage of the OS from the recovery CD, and tell them to call back again if they still had problems, which most did. If anyone had any real gripes with this service model, we'd either direct them to customer service or to the paid "advance tier" of troubleshooting. This shift in technical support caused Gateway's reputation to absolutely tank. In one year we went from second-best rated in the industry behind Dell to worse than Packard Bell--and that is saying something! Shortly after that survey came out, they fired some VP of technical support, presumably the moron who instituted the new policies in the first place. By 1999, the new VP had come up with a brilliant new strategy for tech support that they called "First Call esolution." The tech assigned to the call would once again work with the customer until the issue was resolved, although we now had to follow the steps documented in their troubleshooting intranet system, called The Source. The idea was that they could hire less-experienced techs for less money, and just have them follow a script. And boy, there were consequences if we didn't: Even if we knew what the issue was and could easily skip right to the solution, if we didn't follow the steps in that script, we'd get either reprimanded or fired. I quit Gateway in late 1999, just as the eMachines buyout was happening, Gateway started selling the worst AIO PCs on the market, and Windows Me dropped like a wet turd. I found out a few months later that they'd shuttered the entire call center and laid every US tech support worker off. So that was the end of Gateway as I knew it. For a few precious years, the culture was at least decent. But man, it went toxic fast, and it never recovered.

I remember fall 1988 when I set up my new Gateway 386. My college roommate was stunned, “Wow, it’s got a 65 megabyte hard drive!? You’ll never fill that up.”

As a former Gateway employee, I can tell you the environment working there was amazing. Then, the move to Cali and we could all tell a difference was coming. We went from customer focused to dollar focused. I never met him, but friends told me about meeting Ted Waite at the Christmas party and he was super awesome (and got way too drunk and started inviting people on the street to come in). Ted, I wish it had all kept going. I still compare IT support systems to the one we had a Gateway and the environment was great. I never hated working there and I was started off in Queue 64 (unsolvable problems and mad customers).

I worked in Sales and Support at Gateway. I remember when we were treated like family. We always had a great time until we were turned into corporate numbers in the year 2000. That was the year everyone who worked for Gateway saw the writing on the wall. We all wanted to eat Dell for lunch, then changed our tune to directing customers to Dell. I loved the company up until it moved to California, and I hated what it had become. A shame. Treat your employees right, and you will always get returning customers.

My brother worked for a gateway store when I was really young and every time I saw the cow print it immediately made me think of him. He's passed since but every time I see the gateway logo it brings back good memories. If they ever come back in to production I think is pick one up just for the nostalgia

My uncle used to work for Gateway and he even gave me a free PC because he had multiple computers, I had a Gateway 2000 that had lots of PC games on it!

I remember teaching my mom how to double click on our first Gateway computer in the 90s. I still recall thinking "why is it in a cow box?"

My eyes were popping out of their sockets when I saw that revenue growth in their early years. Sure, tech companies have the highest growth potentials but damn that was insane! It's a shame they fell almost as fast as they rose.

I grew up in Sioux City, next to North Sioux SD, where they were based out of. Thousands of people lost their jobs/careers at Gateway in the recession, near the Acer acquisition. (including my mom.) My friend is also the daughter of cofounder Mike, who before he died, was not well-liked in the area or company. The downfall of Gateway is very personal and was life-changing to thousands of people in Northwest Iowa. :(

The Computer History Museum needs a clean Gateway Computer box for their nostalgic section.

My parents had a cow-patterned Gateway mousepad and I always wondered what Gateway was supposed to be.

I had a Gateway computer. Bought it through the local Gateway store and was very happy with it. Your video shows, like so many others that you’ve made, that the demise of the company can be laid at the feet of poor management decisions, not an issue with the quality of their product. I’m amazed at how so many good brands go down the tubes by over expansion, over leveraging, and just plain stupid management decisions.

Worked at a gateway factory after high-school, it was awesome till we had a meeting where they announced record profits, right afterwards they had another meeting where they called 200 names. I was one of them. We got laid off on the spot. Was so glad to watch that company burn.

1980s - guy starts company using direct sales to cut out the cost of having to have storefronts and middlemen 2000s - same guy creates a bunch of expensive storefronts and middlemen

I remember their wacky ads they used to run. Then they decided to be all professional and it seemed they went off a cliff with the end of the wacky ads.

The collapse of Gateway was a huge blow to the Sioux City area.

I worked tech support there 92-93. It was a great place to work. Being a computer nerd, I was happy to be there. Everybody was young, lots of good ideas coming out, and the cafeteria was even great. lol To me, when they went public is when things started going downhill. Instead of focusing on providing a great product for the customer it became "cut corners to give back to the investors."

People used to be proud of putting their Gateway boxes out with the garbage and having their neighbors see them in envy.

Santa got me a gateway computer in 98. All I wanted was a computer and asked Santa more than once that year. Seeing that cow box in my living room is one of my clearest and best Christmas memories

I lived the decline, I was a manger at the Lake Forest facility where we had ALR, our server manufacturing and our SMB sales center. You did it the main points. We should have closed the stores much sooner. As for laptops we were working on the first $1000. Laptop when we got the word we all lost our jobs. I was in escrow on my first house with a young family. It wrecked me for several years to get back on track. Decision by executives (greedy ones) effects hard working people.

Oh, boy, does this bring back some memories...... I worked for GW for a number of years - first in a tech support call center, and from there, as a technician in one of those "Country Stores." It was quite an experience, but ended when the decline began, and they started closing the stores. Had some good times there...

You know today is a special day when Company Man uploads not one but *TWO* videos in one day!

My parents are still using their gateway desktop from 2010. That thing just keeps chugging along...

My first pc was a Gateway. It was a work horse, originally intended for home use, but eventually was promoted to the main PC in my photography business. Never once had to call support. Still have the cow boxes!

I used to work in I.T. Support - fixing these PCs tended to be a REAL challenge - what with having to do some sometimes crazy rejumpering on the motherboard plus a ton of lateral thinking etc. for other fixes. Loved it - HAPPY DAZE!

Hold on, this is a two for one special

Gateway PCs was very popular for a time in the Netherlands because of that cow pattern.

This honestly explains a lot. At a kid, right around the fall of gateway, my parents gave me my first laptop which was a gateway and I remember my dad insisting that it was the best on the market. I only knew like hp. He is usually several years behind the times in what he deems good so this explains a lot. While there were design flaws, it was a good computer that lasted me like 7 years.

The demo store concept was such a good idea for the time. Before my parents bought one around 2000, we were wowed by the graphics in the games on demo and you could really see yourself owning one from playing it. As a kid, these stores felt like going to a car dealership and getting to do burnouts on anything the lot had before you purchased anything

I remember when having a Gateway computer was a major flex.

Gateway's Cow logo aesthetic is what makes it unique, I really like it.

I worked at the main plant in 2000 for about two weeks as a consultant. Surreal experience and fun to look on the wall of the original office with adds. I saw a forklift go by and had what I estimated to be $2M worth of RAM chips.

I was pleased with the gateways my family got when I was a kid. My parents would let me (more or less) decide which model/components to add. I think I remember Gateway had video cards available with their computers, and a good sound system package. Eventually I learned how to build my own, but gateway was literally my gateway to becoming interested in PCs

As a 33 year old who got his education in finance, this is about to answer both a professional curiosity and a childhood burning question at the same time. I'm excited.

I remember my mom getting me a gateway computer back in 1999 I was super happy it actually lasted for 12 years before it broke

As a kid I loved Gateway. I would ride my bike to their store regularly to play Rainbow Six on their demo computers. I leafletted my own house with demands for a Gateway. In the end my parents bought me a Dell (I knew more about computers than they did but they didn't believe it because I was a kid.) Despite that, I still have fond memories of Gateway. It's a nostalgia trip.

I worked at Gateway Country in 1998 as a salesman. It was a booming and prosperous time. We can easily beat the local vendors at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. because their stock was older hardware and Gateway was custom ordered. The margins on PCs quickly erorded because of so much competition and agree that there should have been more focs on laptops as opposed to WebTv, Plasma TVs, and other electronics.

Growing up, my family had a mid-90's gateway computer. Thing was built like an absolute tank and it came with a fantastic set of computer speakers with subwoofer that I used through college and graduate school. Sad to see the company fallen so far.

My aunt still has a Gateway and still uses it as her primary computer, unironically cows are her fav animal too

Thank you for putting all of this together; very informative.

Love videos like this! So happy I found this channel. Just subscribed!

I’ll never forget those cow computers, always my favorite

My parents bought a Gateway system in 1994 and it was so awesome. They built the system based on our specific needs and really had over the top customer service. We got a free printer with a design program and went crazy printing flyers and such for my moms charity. Good times, good memories. 🐄

Just stumbled across this, brought back a lot of memories, both good and bad. Was a senior bench tech at a Country Store for 5 years, lightning season was always a nightmare. Then there was the exploding capacitor debacle. What I think brought down the company was their forays into esoteric, before its time, tech, like the "internet appliance" that just ran AOL and in home power line ethernet. The TVs were like "wtf are we doing selling plasma displays?" I got out just as my shares were about to vest as they tanked and the stores closed nationwide, seems like it was providence that I was able to move on.

I owned several Gateway computers over a few years. They were so far ahead of everyone else for their time, absolutely great, and you could customize them online or over the phone when you ordered them, and they were simply beautiful machines. Very few cases today carry a brand identifying signature look like Gateway machines did.

Our first family computer was a Gateway in 1998. We loved it.

*”Bro, The last time I use the Gateway computer was back in 1996 before I hit puberty!”*

Gateway: 82, retired now, have probably owned 20 computers plus bought a hundred or so for companies I worked for. Gateway is the only computer company I really loved. Sales and service in their stores was fantastic. Hope the inventors came out OK. Thanks for the article.

Their plan of opening retail stores is what sunk them. The stores added costs such as rent, payroll, rental insurance, etc. These overhead costs killed the razor thin margins that they were making.

I actually had a customer surprised we still sold them at Walmart

I haven’t thought about Gateway Computers in probably close to 20 years. But as soon as I saw the thumbnail it was like a video game moment where a core memory gets unlocked. Good stuff.

My grandma bought a new Gateway in 95'. I played Doom on it. It was a quality machine. I'm sad that they lost their way, and disappeared. Thank you.

Day gets so much better when a decline of vid comes out

When I was an IT technician in the year 1999, a lot of the PCs that I served were Gateway 2000. My main computer today is a Gateway that I bought in the year 2013. I use it everyday. In fact I still have a Gateway laptop that I bought in the year 2005. I remember the boxes and the Gateway stores. Gateway was my favorite brand of PC for several years.

I worked at Gateway from 1998 to 2000 when all the changes took place. What was not mentioned was that most of the corporate people that were brought in at that time were from WorldCom which was also under investigation at the time which should have made Waitt second guess the moves that were being made. Gateway already had some issues including extreme nepotism which you might expect in small communities where they started but it continued into their factories and stores as they expanded. The Worldcom people tried to change the whole culture and even the selling system of the company requiring the salespeople to make cold calls to people who applied for a nonrelated credit card. Plus their advertising at the time pushed monthly payments but 99.9% of the people attracted to the ads did not qualify.

Love your channel man, great stuff! Yeah I remember Gateway. We were too poor to have a computer but my friend had one and it was a powerhouse

Being 53 years old I can honestly say I not only lived through GATEWAY dominance but I really wanted one of their systems. Never got one as I was living very poorly barely getting by but definitely was my dream system. Back then it really seemed they would never be toppled.

First desktop I ever bought was a Gateway. They had an easy build your own PC option that a lot of guys in my barracks got on with

The first desktop computer my family had was a Gateway we bought in 2000. It was so cool to get to use a computer at that time, especially for me in primary school.

My mom had a Gateway for many years. I remember them being relatively easy for computer newbies to learn to use.

As a former employee when ted stepped down and Ahole Jeff came on board everything became statistics and numbers and they pissed away the customer base on top of the tech crash they just could not recover I was there in KC from 98 to the end of 02 good video!

This is one of the only channels I can watch while eating because nothing inappropriate pops up

I bought Gateway PCs for the office in 1991. They were great. You configured the PC exactly they way you wanted it and it showed up a short time later. They worked and were blazingly fast at the time and the price was right. They actually assembled them in a barn. Then they just sort of faded into history like so many others.

Thanks for this history lesson about Gateway. I owned a Gateway desktop computer in the mid-1990's. For it's time, it was a good workstation. At the time I lived in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio not far from a Gateway Training Center. They offered classes. Of course, the classes were a marketing tool, but so what? Sometime around 1999(?) I took a 4 hour intro to MS Access database creation class. My vague recollection is the seminar was free if you sat through a short presentation about the company. "More power too 'em", I say. And even if it did cost money, what I got out of that 4 hours was well worth it.

I remember in 1997 my parents took me to the Gateway store. I was so fascinated with computers as such a young child.

I worked for Gateway, they announced that they where closing all their stores on April 1st, and a lot of us thought it was a joke.

I'd love to hear more about computers and electronics from you!

Memory unlocked! I forgot about these!

My first computer was a Gateway2000 in the early 90s. It was the P5-90, their top of the line model, with a super fast 90mhz Pentium processor, a huge ONE GIGABYTE hard drive, lightning fast 16MB of RAM, booming Altec Lansing speakers, a 3.5" floppy drive, CR-ROM drive for the included Microsoft Encarta, an SVGA monitor, and a state of the art 14.4k dial up modem. It was $3000, giant cow boxes and all. How times have changed.

I had a Gateway that lasted a long time, it was a good computer.

I was born in '82 and remember wanting a Gateway computer so bad simply because of the marketing and the cow print box. My parents ended up buying Compaq Presario which I spent many many hours on lol

I remember years ago my gateway computer was late. I received the box with a gateway mug, and hot chocolate and a letter of apology. My computer arrived. About a week later.

I had never really heard anyone talk about Gateway, but one of our storage boxes for our Christmas supplies is a n old gateway box with the cow print on it. Classic!

4 glorious years, to celebrate with 2 videos in one day.

I still remember those long support calls to Gateway. Remember one time asking the question, "what did you do before becoming a tech support" - answer was "I sold blue jeans. 6 weeks training and now I'm on the phone".

My grandmother bought a Gateway Solo 9300 brand new fully loaded. Beautiful machine and incredible build quality. I still have it to this day

Got my first Gateway in 1995 for a whopping $3k. I don't regret the computer / software skills I've obtained during that era. In reality, it was a very modest price for the education.

I did contract work at a Gateway warehouse in Irvine CA and when they were closing up shop they were just throwing new computers in the box into the dumpsters. It was sad to see. So many children/schools could have really used them.

Solid analysis thank you

Man, my family had a Gateway computer back in the early 2000s! Lotta good memories playing games on it and that classic XP/95 software. The cow box logo always brings em back!

I always thought Gateway failed because of the"dude, you're gettin a Dell." guy. LOL

Fun fact: You can buy a gateway laptop at walmart still.

In 1999, I bought a new Gateway PC after checking one out at the Gateway store in Murray, Utah. The day I came home to the big cow-looking box was indeed a happy day. Their machines just worked.

Memories! I used my graduation gift money to buy a Gateway. Started my first business with it that ultimately led me to be self employed many years later thanks to the Internet. I still remember the cow print mousepad and mug that came with it. Sadly I broke the mug 😭. Gateway will always have a special place in my heart. ❤

"Dude, you're getting a Dell!!"

When I was a kid, we kept that huge gateway box for storage of random paperwork for like 10 years, lol

I am typing this on a Gateway 2000 programmable keyboard that I still use with my home-built Ryzen-7 based home computer. This keyboard came with my first 486 system from Gateway which I got around 1993. I love the feel of the keys, and the extra function keys on the left that are programmable. You wouldn't believe how convenient it is to have an "Enter" key within reach of my left pinkie finger. Every time I upgrade my system I keep my keyboard. It hasn't let me down yet, even though some systems required an adapter, though my current motherboard allows the keyboard to plug in directly.

Wow, what a great business video. I was an early on Gateway owner and stock holder. I still have a Gateway laptop. Although, I haven't used it in years, and the battery is dead. I did transfer some files off it I thought I needed. I am going to pull the hard drive and send it off to the next e-recycling program in my town. I would enjoy seeing Gateway make a comeback!

I remember those damn commercials, just hogging a portion of my brain but I never remembered the company. Now I can put that memory to rest.