eMachines used to be bad before Gateway took over, right?

It seems like Emachine has pull gateway down with them. Well, their Gateway desktop with AMD 64 (recently purchased), does not feel as fast as my Gateway desktop with the Intel Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz (2-3 years ago) Also, the tower feels cheap compare to my gateway desktop purchased 2-3 years ago. Maybe Hp/Compaq should merge with Gateway/Emachine. Their desktop seems more stable.

Actually emachines improved dramatically before the merger. The bulk of my work now on newer computers is on Dell, HP , and Computer Direct Outlet (local OEM builder) machines. I have seen very few Gateway/emachine machines come my way. Dells tend to have bad HDDs and power supplies, and I have seen an uncanny number of HP/Compaq machines in the past few months with faulty power supplies. The only GW/emac machines I have gotten to fix were just software issues.

Also, FWIW, emachines technically took over GW, keeping the GW name.

If they had to keep the idiotic cow motif, they could at least hire Gary Larson for technical assistance. The cows he did in his Far Side strips used to really crack me up.

I loved them

Random gary larson trivia:

In 1985, Gary Larson received the prestigious accolade of having a newly-discovered species named after him. The Strigiphilus garylarsoni is a biting louse of a genus only found on owls. Larson was far from offended, and has since said: "Actually, I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni

...just a little off topic, but its worth it

I would say that your old desktop probably has hyperthreading and you are feeling the effects of not having it on the new desktop. That is not Gateways fault, that is just the difference in Processors. I also have a Gateway A64 desktop and although it feels slower in windows, it kicks the living crap out of my P4 3.0E in anything and everything else. Also the case qaulity seems really good to me, compared to HP or Dell.

I never really thought Emachines was all that bad before the merger, although I only had one. I bought a 500is desktop in 2000 and it is still in great condition today.
Gateway acquired emachines, not the other way around. Also the Emachines devision uses the Gateway name on products with an MSRP over a certain amount (I think it was $700 or so) and the Emachines name on products under that amount. That does not apply to the Gateway devision however, they use only the Gateway name.

A good example of this is both my laptop & Desktop. Both are Gateway's however the support is provided by Emachines. Sometimes when I call support they answer the phone "Emachines". Also both the RMA box I recieved and a replacement modem I recieved were sent from Emachines. The support for Gateway direct models however is supplied by Gateway.

"Gateway aquiredemachines, not the other way around."

I have often wondered how did Gateway buy eMachines, and eMachines let it happen, after eMachines surpased Gateway in market share (e no.3 G no.4) and quality. Then if you see the new Gateways they sure look like old eMachines. My eMachines rock , Not overloaded with b.s. like hp/compaq, you know aol , mindspring and other useles crap(norton etc.). Just os and some other easily deleted progs. Kinda hard to justify building a normal use system when cheap eMachines AMD64's can be had for $600 w/monitor. Now hardcore gaming different story.

I wish I still had the links to prove it, but I do know one ex-employee that can back me up on here . Gateway did not buy emachines.

I also know an ex-employee that worked for Emachines at the time of the acquisition. My brother-in-law. Emachines was acquired by Gateway for $30,000,000 plus 50,000,000 shares of Gateway stock. There is no way that Emachines could have acquired Gateway. Emachines may have passed Gateway in PC market share, but Gateway still had over 3 times the annual revenue that Emachines did. The Emachines CEO did however take over as Gateways CEO. A couple of things worth reading:

On Emachines website here.

On Gateways website here, here, here, here, and here

Edit: I forgot to add something, Gateway has 372,000,000 shares outstanding, which means that the owner(s) of Emachines (it was a privately owned company) got roughly 13.44% ownership from the deal.

I'd always thought that eMac acquired Gateway, but one of the rags I get, InformationWeek maybe, recently did a big story on the new CEO and they also said that Gateway bought eMachines.

I think this new CEO may have Gateway back on the right track. Time will tell of course.

The old eMachines weren't popular with people who wanted customizable machines. For people who just wanted a computer that would work they way they bought it, there was really nothing wrong with them.

Time for a little review. eMachines completely retooled its products in 2002 - new suppliers, cases, the works. Since that time, eMachines steadily improved not only their products, but theit customer service as well. In fact, if you look at the annual PC World reader surveys, eMachines moved from the bottom of the list in 2002 to #1 in 2004, surpassing even Dell.

As for the merger, Gateway did buy eMachines - on paper. However, the eMachines group took over production of all retail units. The eMachines CEO, who was a former Best Buy VP, took over the reigns of the combined company. The Gateway founder took the opportunity to retire as he felt that Gateway was in good hands with the new leadership, a fact supported by their sales numbers in the year since the merger. If you look at the very first Gateways sold in retail after the merger, you will see that the only difference between them and the eMachines was the front bezel on the case - the rest of the items were identical. The new BTX desktops sold under the Gateway brand use a different case out of necessity, but they are produced on the same lines as the eMachines models. And no, there is no magic price point at which the eMachines-produced models get a Gateway name. They do it mainly by processor models.

The notebooks are still manufactured by OEM fabricators for both lines - hence the M68xx/74xx series being the same except for cosmetic differences.

One final note: for the person who said that HP/Compaq was more stable - are you joking? Their customer satisfaction ratings lag far behind those of eMachines/Gateway, Dell, Toshiba, and Sony.

I agree with everything you said, except the price point. I may be wrong about it but I swore I read where the CEO had said that somewhere. I can't find it now though. No big deal anyway. The other thing that does makes me think that there is a price point that determines the name it gets is that the only difference between this Emachines desktop and my desktop is that it has a 3400+ while mine has a 3500+, and mine was $759.

That's more in line with the way I remember it unfolding.

coming in a little late to the party (in Cali right now), but it was eMachines that got the better end of the deal.

it was eMachines that took over, as tntoak's story explained. they'd been in talks for a while, and apparently the original plan was for eMachines to buy Gateway and privatize it, but the stock value at the time would have made it too costly, so they switched the roles.

oh and tntoak, it is at a price point for Retail, with desktops anyway something around 700 and up and it's got the Gateway name, and below that has the eMachines name.

emachines laptops?

I'm trying to figure out why emachines doesn't sell laptops anymore b/c I love the one I bought 1 year ago. Are all the laptops now sold under the Gateway name??

Thanks,
Matt

more or less, yes. there've been a couple sneak by with the emachines name, but otherwise they all have the gateway name.