E machine which turned into Gateway is located corporately, and tech support speaking is in South Dakota. After many contacts with telephone tech support, which was very poor, I got acquainted with their customer service manager.

I sent copies of warranties to her which she essentially ignored. For example, one of their warranties says that if the machine is not fixed in three repair attempts, you will get a new one. It was well documented that it was not fixed in three attempts, because field technicians were sent to my location and were not able to fix it three times.

Then she began to re-write the warranty by adding provisions that required:

1. The attempted repairs must involve "major parts";
2. Each time it must be sent to the service center.

The three service visits involved replacing the motherboard, as "major" a part as there is on a computer.

The warranty said nothing about a requirement that the unit be sent to a "service center," only that there be "three unresolved repair incidents".

The matter became ridiculous when I was reduced to reading from a dictionary to her from the entry for "repair." It was her position that "repair" did not mean replacing the motherboard. She also maintained that "repair" did not include "replace."

I read her the definition of "repair" from my unabridged dictionary. A replacement is a repair, the dictionary said, which made no impression on her. She continued to demand that I send the thrice repaired machine to the service center for a fourth repair.

I contacted the South Dakota Department of Consumer Affairs. Soon I received a new system from the manager. I also received a follow up letter from the South Dakota Attorney General, confirming receipt of the complaint. It seemed that the manager backed off when the Attorney General stepped in.

The new replacement computer developed a problem within a couple of weeks, and the on-off switch worked intermittently.

Here is the real joke with e machine/Gateway. Anyone who has called their tech support line will tell you that they have a system in place which seems designed to harass and delay tech support calls.

First, the call is on the customer's nickel. Knowing that, Gateway extends and delays tech support calls for between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. What happens during this time is that a person who admittedly has no authority at all, plays the game that is played at car dealerships of telling you he is in touch with his supervisor and will transmit whatever you have to say to that person for a decision. Of course, the supervisor remains anonymous.

You find yourself in the embarrassing position of explaining your problem to someone who has no authority to deal with the problem. Also, you are informed that the anonymous supervisor is busy and you will have to wait while the tech support person also waits for a decision. So you have two tech support persons in place of one, with the one you actually speak to being a mere mouthpiece for the one that is supposedly in the background somewhere making a decision.

"You have no authority at all? Is that right?" I asked.

"Yes, I suppose so, if you want to put it that way."

"Well, what way would you put it?"

"I guess you could put it that way."

(At this point the front man-flak catcher is becoming irritated). If you continue in this vein the front man-flak catcher will hang up on you.

On 2/1/06 I wrote to the manager to tell here that the monitor on the original system had died. She responded that it was not covered under the warranty.

On 2/6/06 I wrote to her again, telling her that I had read the warranty and the monitor was covered.

She subsequently called to say that she was mistaken, the monitor was covered, and sent a new monitor.

Of course, most consumers who were not into reading the fine print in warranties (or had not kept all this paperwork) would have been cheated out of a monitor by this point.

The last time I spoke to the manager, I explained I wanted to avoid the tech support shuffle and asked her to assign a technician to repair the defect in the most recent system. She refused. When I reminded her that I had legal recourse for this, she raised her voice, and said "DON'T THREATEN ME! DON'T THREATEN ME!"

I bought this Gateway Pentium 2 450 PC around 1 month ago, second hand off EBAY. Though I was pleased with the PC's performance on basic games such as Minesweeper, when I tried to play Counter-Strike the graphics card was not compatible with the monitor.