I purchased my Gateway MX6926b laptop from Staples for £549 in October of 2006, preloaded with Windows XP Home. For the first few months of ownership, all was well, but around December the slightly poor build quality began to show. Although the laptop is fine technically, the cursor pad occasionally does not respond, and the left clicker button has almost broken completely. Also, the panel that covers the keyboard/cursor part of the laptop is loose in the bottom right-hand corner.
As for technical performance, the laptop is perfectly capable for normal word processing and internet browsing, as well as for games that are not too technically demanding. However, around 2 months ago the laptop stopped detecting the Intel wireless card that was installed into the laptop, forcing me to buy an insertable Netgear wireless card. The only other problem I have had is when I decided the RAM needed upgrading, and added a 1GB DDR2 RAM card, boosting the RAM to 1268MB. However, the RAM card was faulty, and I ultimately had to remove it, replacing the stock 256MB RAM card. Because this was not the fault of Gateway, I cannot put this down to the laptop.
Overall the laptop has been good value for money, and besides a couple of minor technical issues, it has served me well for the past year and hopefully, years to come.