SUNY Potdam

Foreword

It appears that this page ranks highly in many search engines. If you are here from a web search, please be aware that we are not affiliated with Gateway/MPC in any way.  We are customers left in a bad position just like you. We cannot service your warranty Gateway/MPC computer for you nor do we have any information about service. The information below is purely for our internal support of computers owned by SUNY Potsdam.

Support Change History

A year ago, Gateway Computers Inc. was purchased by Acer Computers. Acer subsequently sold the Professional Division of Gateway Computers Inc. to MPC Corporation. MPC Corporation has been unable to make their new combined company financially viable. The company has been de-listed from the stock exchanges, has laid-off a significant number of their staff, and is having trouble meeting their warranty obligations. It was announced on November 7, 2008 that MPC is entering Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. As of December 29, 2008 MPC decided to close their doors and liquidate their assets.

With all of these changes happening, we were constantly faced with backordered product and parts shortages. With no end in sight, SUNY Potsdam switched to Hewlett Packard as our vendor of choice for Windows based computers.

What does all of this mean for SUNY Potsdam?

The College had three-year warranties for all Gateway computer equipment. MPC is unable to honor these warranties and unfortunately these expenses must now be absorbed by the institution.

Regrettably, each department must be responsible for absorbing the cost of any replacement parts and or replacement machines. CTS will continue to provide the labor for the repairs at no charge to the department as has been the practice.

Please understand that this applies only to Gateway machines. This does not impact any computers purchased through Hewlett-Packard (HP) or Apple.

How will we deal with this lost warranty support?

There are several strategies CTS will take to continue providing support to our inventory of Gateway computers.

1. CTS will recover parts from computers sent to us for disposal. Many of these parts are still good and can be used to repair computers still in use. This had been done in the past to keep out of warranty equipment functional and now will be extended to all Gateway computers.

2. Computers that experience hardware failures will need to be evaluated to determine whether or not repairs are financially feasible. For example, significant repairs to a 1 year old laptop may be determined to be financially sound while significant repairs to a 3 year old laptop may not make sense to the College and in such cases should be replaced. Minor repairs to computers make sense and parts can be ordered to repair the unit.

3. There are several suppliers who will continue to provide parts for the Gateway models that we use on campus. This will allow us to deal with repairs that are deemed financially feasible. Please note that laptop parts are very expensive and major repairs will need to be critically evaluated.

If you have questions about the support of your Gateway equipment, please feel free to contact the CTS Helpdesk at x2083 or email helpdesk@potsdam.edu.