We Found Out Who Makes Walmart’s New Gateway Laptops, and It’s Bad News
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:
We found out who makes Walmart's new Gateway laptops, and it's bad news:
Back in 2007, Taiwan-based PC manufacturer Acer bought the once-iconic Gateway brand in order to stick a thumb in the eye of rival OEM Lenovo and increase its US market presence. In the 13 years since, the Gateway brand has languished largely unused, while Acer built up its own name in the United States directly. The cow is officially back now, though, with a new line of mostly budget, Walmart-exclusive Gateway laptops.
[...] In June of this year, we reviewed and absolutely despised a $140 EVOO laptop-a device powered by an AMD A4-9120e CPU, just like the cheapest model of Gateway laptop in the table above. The new GWTN116-1BL has twice the RAM and storage compared to the effectively uncooled, drastically underclocked, and absolutely bletcherous EVOO EV-C-116-5-but when we went sleuthing, we discovered shipping records indicating that it, too, is an EVOO system.
More accurately, EVOO imports devices made by Shenzhen Bmorn Technology, a Chinese national brand. We found US Customs records of EVOO importing from Bmorn, with devices under both the Gateway brand and EVOO's own inside the same shipment.
An Acer representative confirmed later that, although Acer does own the Gateway brand, it is not directly involved in the production or manufacture of these devices.
[...] We've heard people say decent things about EVOO's higher-end laptops, so it's possible that some of these will turn out to be a good deal. We intend to test and review at least one of them here soon-but in the meantime, we'd advise some caution with the new "Gateway" brand.
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