Thats probably just a series of bad incidents you or your friend have had with GATEWAY.
Persoanlly I have dealt with DELL and GATEWAY, and i like Gateway better. It's just easier to have someone walk you through steps online, rather then on the phoen, they can send you links, screenshots, and all the goodies.
And now onto you saying that GATEWAY tried to sell your friend a stick of 256 mb ram, for $250. Now, im going to have to call the bullsh*t alarm here. Either you simply or your friend simply does not like gateway. Now I would much rather as of right now make my own computer then leave it to GATEWAY to give me one, but i doubt Gateway is that dumb to think anyone will buy that. I inquired about buying similar ram except 512 mb, for $110. Still probably not the worlds greatest price, but its less then half of what you/your friend said. here is a direct quote from gateways site:
Gateway said:
Memory's cheap, so you might as well stock up.
Now, I'm not Sherlock Holmes or anything (sp?) but i would think, that GATEWAY is not so dumb to call memory cheap, and then try to sell a stick of 256 for $250, when they have whole computers (maybe not good ones, but whole computers), for $599. Now, sure they may not be aiming at the most computer intelligent people out their, but i think along with around %99 of people that even people who aren't exactly computer genuis', can figure out that paying $250 for a part relativly small part of a computer when you compare it to all the other stuff in a computer, cost almost half, of a new computer GATEWAY themselves is saying. [/End Rant] [/End BullSh*t alarm]