Gateway M505XL - Page 8

awsome! thanks for the quick reply.. the 505 is looking better and better now!
--JR

I will be recieving my m505XL today. The salesman assured me that I would recieve the 5200rpm drive and that I had nothing to worry about. So we'll see tonight...

I'll keep ya'll posted.

Well, just got home from work, and here's my findings...

Upon taking her outta the box, I was VERY impressed. Absolutely beautiful! The seal on my box was actually not broken.

When I started my m505XL up, the first thing I noticed was a dead pixel...doh! Not off to a good start I would say. Next thing I checked was the HD; Fujitsu MHT2060AT, which is a 4200RPM drive

Lastly, I ordered Office 2003 PRO, instead I recieved Office XP Pro.

I dunno what to say other than Gateway is getting a call first thing in the morning. Other than the above quirks, I absolutely love this laptop. I just wish I would've recieved the laptop as "promised".

Since I've gotta wait to see what Gateway says tomorrow, i'm gonna do some testing tonight. I'll tell you guys how it goes.

laterz

fujitsu? whats going on over there at gateway... looks like all xl owners are getting screwed...

btw... for those that received their laptops....

was your hard drive partitioned into a C and D drive?

Mine was.... the wierd thing for me was C drive was formatted in NTFS format and D was in FAT format.... is this normal?????????

someone that knows more about comps please tell me if its normal and those that got their xl models... were your hard drives partitioned?

retailers usually do some wierd stuff to their systems when they send them out.. ie. all the crappy dell branded software i had to clear off my laptop when i got it!

just stick in that OS cd and format the drive b4 you start putting anything onto your new lappy and format the drives to appear how you want them to.

--JR

I asked Gateway what it would take to return this laptop since I am within the 15 day period. Their policy calls for either charging shipping and handling or a 15% restocking fee. They don't tell you which they will hit you with, but there is a substantial difference. Shipping is $40 or less but 15% amounts to $300!
Now the kicker... The sales rep told me they charge BOTH and no limit on the 15%!
So, again, beware before you buy. If you don't like it or it is wrong and you want to return it, they will charge you around $340 for being unsatisfied! Can you believe it?
Of course all is waived if you purchase another system of equal or greater value... Which goes to show you they CAN waive it if they want.
I am really disliking Gateway customer service.

Mine sure was. I always do the whole reformat process so this isn't a big deal. I was thinking though, hey, maybe they created that D: partition to be used for a swap file, definetly not. Doesn't make sense to me.

Like I said, i'm going to give them another chance because I really like this machine. I just hope that I don't get the run around.

Think that will work if I used Gateway financing (Citibank)?

Hard drive epidemic!!

Hello All. I am glad to inform you that gateway is standing by their product.
I asked the tech i spoke with if the reason why every single 505xl was being shipped with the wrong HD was becuase they have them prebuilt from wistron(ODM) as bargainseeker had suggested, and surprise; his answer was yes! He did say that anyone who calls and verifies that they did recieved the wrong HD can have it replaced with the toshiba 5400rpm HD. Don't worry, all they make you do is take the hard drive out and read that it says hitachi 4200 rpm (even though they can see the s/n from device manager). Then they write a service request ticket and tell you you'll have the new HD in 3-5 days. They send a return label so you can return the wrong HD. I was satisfied overall with the service.

Maybe it is me?

Did you just call today? I was told I have to wait until after Christmas before I can even persue this further. Do I have some bad luck when I call or what? I am not being a jerk to the CSR or anything. Another problem I have is my serial number is still not in their system. So when I go to the support site, I cannot get system-specific information.

about switching out the hard drive, does anyone know which hard drives are compatible that I could purchase? Speed doesn't mean much to me, but I am looking for something with more capacity.

emtownsend

I called three times yesterday during different times of the day. this was because i was calling from my cellphone my signal kept fading. the third time i called however everything was taken care of in a matter of 15 minutes. Try calling again and going over the problem with customer service since that is the only department that would have your info in their system. whenthe orders are new it takes a while for your info to appear on the tech support system ( that's what i got from the first call i made), besides customer service is the department that handles the replacement issues. sometimes the person you get has had a rough day and just acts like an a**hole when he/she feels like it. i would call and try with customer service. you have nothing to loose... good luck!

Just in case some of you were still wondering why gateway has made a D partition on the laptops, it's because the built-in music player accesses the D drive to play music files while the laptop is turned off.
BTW, has anyone experienced any problems with the cd-drive? Mine doesn't seem to read half of my CD's. otherwise everything else about this baby is awesome

Well I called today and worked a deal out. After being on the phone for over an hour, I finally was able to get to the highest managment since tech support wasn't able to provide much help.

I just told them strait up that I would rather not return this notebook, so i'm willing to work with them as much as possible. I understand that problems happen and bad pixels on lcd's happen as well.

I told them about the whole harddrive issues we are experiencing, and that it's disapointing when I do not recieve what I am promissed from the sales staff. Since he was not even aware of the Toshiba 5400rpm drive, I worked with him to point out that it's on gateway's site. He found this very interesting himself, and he's going to look into what can be done to correct this problem.

Since I had a dead pixel, that pretty much meant that the whole notebook needed to be replaced. So in the end, he is going to send me out a new m505XL, but is also going to check into wether it has the Toshiba drive in it. If he cannot find that information out, he is going to send a Toshiba drive out along with the laptop, to then be replaced by me if the new system has the 4200rpm drive. The new unit along with the drive will also be sent out overnight.

Its nice I was able to work this deal out, but I just hope everything goes smoothly this time around.

Sweet! I'm glad to hear someone over there can actually provide customer service. I think I have been talking to the wrong folks. Tomorrow, I will call customer service, bright and early, and try from scratch. Thanks for the encouraging information! I really do want to keep this laptop, so I will keep trying until Gateway gets it right!

Does anybody have a link to Wistron...for spec's on pre-505's?