- Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
2.5 stars
"started off great...but didn't last long...too many problems"
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.
- 1 reply to this review
-
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.
