Gateway GT5414E Refurbished AMD Desktop Computer - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4GHz (Dual-Core), 2GB DDR2, 320GB SATA II HDD, DVD±RW Dual-Layer, Flash Media Reader, Windows Vista Home Premium

List Price: $349.99

Customer Reviews:

An $800 box of junk [Posted on 2007-09-08]
I usually dont write hostile reviews, but be forewarned, this is one of them. And I better write it quickly, or else this crummy computer will freeze up, lose this review, and it'll take me another half-hour to get the thing booted & back online.

And there, in a nutshell, you have the problem with this crummy excuse for a computer. I should have suspected something amiss when I returned the first non-functioning one to the Best Buy where I bought it and while standing on line saw seven other ones sitting behind the Returns counter. Instead, I took a second one home, having to return that one, too. After two more round-trips from store to home to store and back again, the techs they had working at Best Buy--the Geek Squad--figured they had to reload all the software, which they kindly did, and I took it home. Now it works about 50 percent of the time.

Each morning, it's like trying to start an old car with a bad ignition system. You hear it cranking & cranking, but ultimately it stalls. Finally, you get it started...but you better keep typing or it'll seize up and stall on you all over again. Even if you do keep typing, it's likely to freeze up, only then you've lost whatever you've been working on.

I would have returned this $800 box of junk a fourth and final time but I simply couldnt put it back in the box, carry it down the stairs, and make the 40-minute round trip to the store where I bought it even one more time. Instead, I was tempted to just carry it down the stairs and put it at the curb. Every day Im hard-pressed to keep myself from doing just that...or, to save myself the trouble, just throwing it out the window.

I cant wait for a couple of more months to go by so that I can tell myself that Ive suffered enough, that even if this machine actually worked, it would still be conceivably okay to buy a new computer.

Buy anything else. Thats my advice. Anything but this.

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