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"A slow, wait on me, poor investment" on by thebrowser
Pros: Must be some, somewhere
Cons: too long to list
Summary: The system, (2.8 gig. processor, 512 [400 f.s.b.]ram), is not as fast as my 6 year old 1000 Emachine.(1.0 gig. processor, 512 ram[133 f.s.b.])in realtime comparison by me.
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"DO NOT BUY!" on by knit1bead2
Pros: For the short time that it worked, it was a speedy machine.
Cons: Overheats, defective AC Adapator kills battery, hinges crack
Summary: I will never again buy any Gateway product. Their customer service was AWFUL from day one. The M520 laptop has KNOWN problems that you can find documented repeatedly if you do some Internet research. Unfortunately, I didn't know this when I bought mine in 2004 and now I'd like to toss it out a window.
I do NOT abuse this machine. I rarely travel with it and the most movement it normally gets is from my lap to a table. Two years is not a reasonable life span for a laptop. During this time, both of my screen hinges cracked and I had to duct tape them. Then it started overheating and shutting itself off. That just got worse until it was doing that many times a day. Then the battery would not charge properly and the machine would not recognize that it was plugged in so trying to operate it at all was a crap shoot. Finally, it got so hot that it melted the AC connector making it impossible to plug it in at all. So....no way to use it on AC power, no way to use it on battery power. Found out that the AC adaptor created the other problems when we tried to plug that adaptor into a Toshiba laptop and it IMMEDIATELY drained the battery on the Toshiba and shut down the machine. Do a Google search for "Gateway M520 problems", you'll see what I'm describing is well documented. -
"started off great...but didn't last long...too many problems" on by vassj50
Pros: fast, scrolling track on trackpad
Cons: runs hot, loud fan, overheats and shuts off, cracked hinges, power supply problems, dvd-rw drive works when it wants to, very expensive to fix, builds up with alot of internal dust. poor service
Summary: after a month or two of owning the machine, the hinges cracked. i see this problem coming up alot. i had a warranty on the machine but they explained that it was a defect and fixed it for free. costumer service was great when i was under warranty and immediately after they denied my ability to extend the warranty, they acted as if i never even bought the product off them. I have had major problems with the power supply which i have seen many others with too. The pin where the ac plug goes into has a major short and i have to maneuver the plug in a unique way each time to get some power out of it. The battery has died totally. After this problem began it started overheating and the dvdrw drive has alot of problems reading some discs (cd or dvd). after all the hinges are loose again. i would never buy again from gateway and would never recommend it. infact i've moved away from PC entirely and bought a 12inch powerbook g4.
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"Strong stable system for the price." on by bryram32
Pros: Great connectivity options w/ 4 usb 2.0 ports and other extras.
Cons: A bit bulky and low battery life.
Summary: I have had this laptop for about three months now. It runs all of the latest games quite well. Better than I had anticipated. I am in the Navy and do a fair amount of traveling. So the battery life is not quite adequate for this. I have had no problems with Gateway's service. The few minor problems that I had with software incompatability was handled quickly and resolved the issue. I have come to learn that Gateway has discontinued this model. In my opinion that's too bad. I have read some other reviews on this product and was quite surprised by some of the negative responses. I hope Gateway continues to put out products that perform as well as this one. If they do I will continue to be a Gateway costumer.
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