Acer Buys, Will Preserve Gateway, eMachines Brands

[OhioChick]

Source: PC Magazine

08.27.07

In a bid to expand its U.S. presence, Taiwan-based PC maker Acer on Monday announced plans to acquire Gateway for $710 million.

Gateway's strong U.S. presence … will complete our global footprint," Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, said during a conference call with reporters early Monday morning.

The deal is expected to produce $150 million in savings by 2008 related to supply and customer service integration, Lanci said. Gateway is the fourth largest PC seller in the U.S. behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo, while Acer is the third largest PC company in the world.

Also on Monday, Gateway said that it will exercise its right to acquire Paris-based PB Holdings S.ar.l, a parent company of Packard Bell BV, from Lap Shun (John) Hui. Under a 2006 non-compete agreement with Hui, Gateway was given first dibs on the Packard Bell unit should Hui decide to sell it. Hui notified Gateway that a third party had made an offer for the company, so Gateway decided to exercise its right of first refusal and snap up PB Holdings itself.

Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2176056,00.asp

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Holy Shit!

$710 Million??!! That's chickenfeed!

[Tempest]

5. The Gateway brand has taken a real beating in recent years

To me $710 million is too much.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

25. That's the general feeling

Acer Shares Fall by Daily Limit on Gateway Purchase

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Acer Inc. shares fell by the daily limit on concern the Taiwanese personal computer supplier is overpaying for a $710 million acquisition of Gateway Inc. to become the world's third-biggest PC maker.

Shares of Acer fell 6.9 percent to NT$59.20 as of 12:14 p.m. in Taipei. Acer yesterday agreed to pay $1.90 a share for Gateway, 57 percent more than its closing price on Aug. 24. Macquarie Securities Ltd. today downgraded the stock to ``neutral'' after the announcement.

The acquisition of Irvine, California-based Gateway would allow Acer to overtake Chinese rival Lenovo Group Ltd. by adding customers in Europe and the U.S. Acer yesterday reported second- quarter profit dropped 36 percent after Lenovo won customers.

Acer is ``wasting its cash bullets'' in an ``overly priced'' takeover of Gateway, Daniel Chang, an analyst at Macquarie Securities Ltd. wrote in a report today. ``Acer focuses too much on market share and ignores its profitability.''
More...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aIrRlH3JnbZE&refer=home

[Tempest]

32. I hope it wasn't something I said

I'm not Merrill Lynch or anything, but it looks like I nailed it.

[rocktivity]

39. It may be my fault, Tempest

Less than a week ago, I put a four-year-old eMachine tube monitor out to pasture in favor of a an LCD monitor: fed up with the extra scrolling required to see all the wider web sites, I joined "The Flat Screen Society." I used it on a Macintosh via a VGA adapter.

:headbang:
rocknation

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Acer makes a pretty good laptop computer.

I've set several up for clients, and haven't had a single complaint. I wouldn't mind getting one for myself.

[Deja Q]

3. I'm partial to Gateways, and Acer does offer a reasonable desktop for the money,

and Gateway is known for reasonable quality as well (my parents' Gateway is still 100% functional after 8 years)...

More power to Acer.

Acer's laptops are not bad either... Gateway's are good too. Gateway also listens to its customers, the MX8739 (newly released) resolves the gripes of the MX8738 (chiefly poor battery life).

[SidDithers]

4. I've got 2 Gateways and have been nothing but happy with them...nt

Sid

[Deja Q]

11. Which models?

(I just got the MX8739 laptop)

[SidDithers]

17. GM5067H desktop is about a year old...

and I just bought a cheapie laptop, MX8711.

I know they're not high end. But for the stuff I do, they're good machines for their price point.

Sid

[King Coal]

7. Sorry, but Gateways are not reasonable quality. They are terrible.

[Deja Q]

9. May I ask why?

What bad experiences have you had with them?

And which brand would you prefer?

(Seriously; I just bought a Gateway but if there's better, I'm open to suggestions.)

[King Coal]

12. It used to be that you could buy two Gateways at the same time.

The same model, and when you opened them up they would have different components. They had lots of memory conflicts. We used to just hate them. Right now, we are buying Dells after buying Compaqs for many years. I don't have too many problems with the Dells. But, I am really prejudiced against Gateways because of all the problems we used to have with them. If you have one and are happy with it, good for you. They could be good computers and I would still hate them because of the past. They were really cheap and shoddy. I won't work on them.

[sybylla]

15. Wow, my experience is just the opposite

I would never buy a Dell and it's not just because Michael Dell is a puke ass-hole.

We went from Gateway pc's to Dell pc's for our business about 5 years ago because of cost savings and had nothing but trouble with their tech support people and their billing people (who couldn't figure their way around sales tax in the state I live in.) I spent far too much time on the phone telling them what "their" problem was and pointing out that it was their problem.

Gateway, on the other hand, has always been terrifically helpful and have outright replaced two failed high-end trinitron monitors with larger monitors and did it without batting an eye. Both replacements arrived within two days of calling tech support. Needless to say we went back to Gateway in a heartbeat.

I am disappointed that they will be moving the entire operation off shore, if I'm reading the subtext in the article correctly. I hate talking to script monkeys in Pakistan when I need intelligent tech support.

[ContraBass Black]

16. On my campus, Acer has the worst reputation of any manufacturer.

Though it may be because the school bookstore once carried them exclusively, so that every inexperienced and incautious user would have one, they seem to be plagued with disproportionately frequent hardware failures.

[JCMach1]

26. Acer laptops are quite good... they also offer some very good inexpensive models

[sakabatou]

6. e-Machines suck

Mine, a while back would have every big power problems and it was hard to fix. XP That and the OS was a demo. That's right it was rnning on a demo. The real Windows OS disc was not included.

[Systematic Chaos]

I get a LOT of calls from E-Machine users at my tech support job.

And they get some totally jacked system issues too. They must get their business from people with very little money who are desperate for a first computer purchase because I can't imagine them having any brand loyalty.

[CRF450]

35. Aint that the truth!

One of my friends mom recently bought an E-Machines pc for the $500 price. It has Vista basic, a 2.8ghz Celeron cpu, and 512mb of ram. Overall the whole damn thing fucking stinks! I told her she made a big mistake buying that computer. My dad bought a HP from Officemax for the same price at around the same time they got the E-machines, and it is 10 times better even with Vista home premium! It has a AMD 4200 X2 cpu, 1gig of memory and a 250gig hard drive.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

8. Emachines suck big time.

I had a string of no less than SIX of them with bad mobos- each one from different, unconnected clients throughout Dallas. Not one of them could be fixed.

[King Coal]

13. Yep. They have the warranty date in the CMOS.

[kysrsoze]

37. They seriously must - I was dumb enough to buy one for next to nothing

and still got suckered. Bought a desktop that failed after a little over a year. Motherboard just plain died. Tried to install the hard drive onto another mobo. Would not start. Was told by tech support I wasn't allowed to have a backup windows disk b/c it was no longer technically an eMachines anymore. Of course, they no longer made a replacement mobo and couldn't source one for me. Last one I'll ever buy. I'm sticking with Toshiba and Dell laptops, and HP desktops. Compaq is absolute garbage too.

[B3Nut]

27. Last eMachines I had on my bench

had a pretty-much bog-standard Intel mobo just like the Dells and Gateways people bring to me. My only beef with it was the (1) cheap power supply (I prefer the little $50 FSP Blue Storms for generic oompa-loompa replacements) and (like all storebought computers) the sheer ton of superfluous crap that comes preloaded. Otherwise they're just another low-end generic PC, seen one, seen 'em all.

All my PC's are my own except the HP laptop I use, I'm happy with it but had to uninstall a boatload of crap. Just give me a bare Windows install, I'll pick my own toppings, thanks.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. I'm using one now.

I don't mind. It's an emachines etower 500id. I found it on a trash pile the day after or a week and a day after the election back in 2004. I finally got around to using it a month ago. It has a Celeron chipset.

[liquiduniverse]

23. i'm on my third e-machines w/out ever having any major problems

it comes with more than a demo disk, unless you were missing some of the packaging. they always come with a backup of the os, you just can't transfer the os to another computer. one good thing about that is you don't have to worry about windows activation.

for the price, you can't beat them. you can't even build a computer for that cheap.

[RebelOne]

29. I just bought my second eMachine.

I like this computer because it runs extremely well and it is very inexpensive.

[Akoto]

14. My new desktop is an Acer. I've been very satisfied.

If they manage to produce similar quality with the other brands, more power to 'em.

[B3Nut]

28. I bought an Acer 20" widescreen

LCD for my home PC (AL2051W), and when Newegg dropped the price to $189 we bought a few at the office, I installed one at my desk. 1680 x 1050 resolution, HDCP-capable, and a glossy high-contrast screen that's the easiest on my eyes I've ever used...I love this display. We have some 19" 1280x1024 versions of this same series in one of our warehouses for the office workers, and they've been solid. Only one line of Acer screens has given us any trouble, a 21" 1600x1200 model that has power supply issues, I've sent two of them back twice. The rest of that model in service (about 6 total) are still working. All the other Acer screens have been great, except a 17" a user damaged. Ah, the joys of IT...

I'd buy a couple more 2051W's if I wasn't broke.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[CRF450]

40. I saw the good reviews their getting on newegg.com

And I'm considering a 20" Acer with my next computer build. Was thinking about the Samsungs but their much more expensive. 180 bucks for a good 20" widescreen monitor is too good of a deal to pass up!

[B3Nut]

41. Can't beat the Egg for fast ship, too. n/t

[RC]

18. Almost every Gateway I have had anything to do with

ate it's hard drive. Some more than once. I'll use them of parts, that's all.
I have an E-machine that has given me years of good service. No problems after I loaded XP in place of ME.
My main machine is an ASUS. Very few problems with this one either.

[NJCher]

19. I've had four Gateways in eight years

3 DTs and 1 laptop. Not one of them has had a hard drive failure. I've passed them on to friends and relatives and they're still working away.



Cher

[salin]

20. I have two - a lap top and a pc...

the PC is six years old and has no problems. The laptop is a little quirky.

[JerseygirlCT]

22. That's what happened to mine. One minute fine, the next -

fried.

[UNCLE_Rico]

21. ALL mass-market pre-build desktop computers SUCK @SS

(and not in the fun sorta way)

Dell, Gateway, emachines, HP - all of them.

I work on them for a living at the moment and they're ALL frickin JUNK.

What I recommend is this:

Take the time to do the research on individual components, figure out what everything does in a computer, how the parts interact, and what gives you the most in the way of future expansion options so that your computer will actually last more than a few years. Check benchmarks/performance/reviews. Budget so that the things you want the computer to be the fastest/best at doing receive the largest chunks of your cash. Then go out and buy each of the components where you find the best price, and BUILD YOUR OWN. You'll end up with a FAR better machine for the same or just a little more money, it won't come with a bunch of CRAP software installed, it will excel at doing the things you use it for the most (instead of being barely passable at everything computers do). Plus, you'll learn a lot in the process (like HOW TO FIX IT YOURSELF) that will save you more money (and TONS of AGGRAVATION) as your life goes on.

[NJCher]

24. that wouldn't surprise me in the least

And that's an excellent idea. I think I'll do it.



Cher

[HughBeaumont]

31. Rico ain't lying.

My home-built, at 1 year old, is clean and fast, mainly because I have the components I want in it and there's no resource-hogging corporate crapware installed. All newegg.com - ordered parts, casings, harnesses, drives and software. I'll never go back to Big Computer PCs.

[Solon]

33. I agree, and to folks who say its hard to do, its fucking color coded now!

Literally, you stick the graphics card in the gray slot for AGP, in mine at least, hell, the motherboard came with a bloody color coded diagram for every component that you could imagine. This includes the connections in the back, for LPT, serial, monitor, sound, etc.

And this was a computer from 6 years ago now! Just a few years before that and it was completely different, adjusting jumper settings for damned near every component was a pain in the ass, now you just plug it in and not worry about it.

[Randomthought]

34. Absolutely!

I have never owned a mass produced desktop PC and never will. I have a Gateway laptop and it's ok for what I need it for-checking email on trips.

[CatholicEdHead]

30. eMachines are both good and bad

I have a laptop of their M6305, which is rock solid. The T1742 had its power supply blow out the motherboard and that machine is pretty much done.

Looking at the low end price points, the current Acers look to be reasonable (though you have to spend $1500 to have it come without onboard video.. grrr).

[hunter]

36. Computers, like cars, all leave the factory as utter garbage.

Some of them just take a little longer to reach the dump.

I don't buy new computers because it's too depressing. The last new computer I bought new for myself was an Atari 8-bit. I still have it too, even though I don't use it because the open source atari800 emulator runs all my old 8 bit atari stuff just fine under Ubuntu, thank you.

All my computers since the Atari have been somebody else's discards, and the really fun thing (for me anyway) is that all these machines still exist, if not in physical form, then as emulations.

[sofa king]

38. Hee hee.

Just a few months ago I selected a computer for my mom, and it took me a couple of days to convince her that the Acer I picked was going to be much better and more affordable than the Gateway her friends told her she had to have.

Thanks for the article. I'm gonna pipe it on over to her tonight.

Edit: Listen to what Rico is tellin' ya. I got the Acer for my mom because I wanted someone else to share the misery of her computer illiteracy. If you're doing it for yourself, a week's worth of reading will get you a system that's still capable and reliable years down the line. Read these pages every day for a couple months and you'll never go back:

http://techreport.com/
http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/
http://www.hardocp.com/

My own computer, Lamont (Son of the Sanford Box), is still smokin' along at 3.2 overclocked gigs four years after I built it. It still kicks the hell out of Mom's Acer, and always will.

[gauguin57]

42. 2-Gateway girl here: I use a 6-year-old desktop and a 5-year-old laptop

We're all still chugging along. NEVER a problem with tech support with Gateway. I hope this sale doesn't change anything!