Gateway Pioneers Single-Source Help Desk Service for Growing Businesses

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Gateway Pioneers Single-Source Help Desk Service for Growing Businesses
  The First Service of Its Kind for Small Businesses, Personalized Help Desk
Provides Much-Needed Support for Gateway and Third-Party Hardware and Software

    SAN DIEGO, Aug. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Gateway, Inc. (NYSE: GTW) today
delivers the industry's most comprehensive support package for growing
businesses with the Gateway(TM) Personalized Help Desk.
    This new service helps boost employee effectiveness and productivity by
giving them a single access point for help with Gateway systems, other major
brands of PCs, servers and peripherals, and more than 150 of the most widely
used software applications.  Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
Gateway Personalized Help Desk helps customers resolve a broad array of
technical and tutorial issues at a fraction of the cost of an in-house,
round-the-clock help desk staff.
    "Gateway's Personalized Help Desk is a breakthrough for small businesses
-- it makes it easier for their employees to be more productive by giving them
the help they need, from a single, trusted source," said Nemo Azamian, vice
president of customer service and support.  "Since small businesses typically
use many brands of products, they often waste valuable time calling multiple
vendors for help when problems arise, or for guidance on how to use software
applications.  For the first time, small businesses have a highly affordable
service that will support all of their hardware and software."
    Gateway designed Personalized Help Desk for small businesses that can't
afford a dedicated in-house help desk service.  Medium-sized businesses will
also use Personalized Help Desk to keep their internal IT personnel focused on
specific IT initiatives such as urgent hardware failures or physical
maintenance -- leaving technical and tutorial support to Gateway's expert
team.
    Businesses can maximize their internal IT effectiveness on a long-term
basis with Personalized Help Desk.  Monthly activity reports enable IT
managers to review the type of calls placed to Personalized Help Desk to
determine if a specific employee or department needs additional application
training.  IT managers can pinpoint recurring hardware or software problems
and take preventative measures to improve future uptime.  Personalized Help
Desk representatives also expedite necessary repairs by dispatching repair
services, based on existing warranties for Gateway products.
    The Personalized Help Desk program provides support for a wide range of
third-party hardware including PCs and servers from Apple, Compaq, Dell, HP,
IBM, Micron, Sony and Toshiba; printers from Canon, Compaq, Brother, Epson,
HP, Lexmark and Xerox; as well as monitors, scanners, PDAs, projectors and
digital cameras from leading manufacturers.  The service also supports the
most popular software applications from leading developers including Adobe,
Corel, Lotus, Microsoft and Symantec. Plus, Personalized Help Desk
representatives can also support proprietary software applications as needed
by Gateway's customers.
    A leader in providing value-based solutions to its customers, Gateway has
established pricing based on unit subscriptions, so customers only pay for the
Help Desk Support they need.  Pricing for annual subscriptions ranges from
$24.00 to $169.00 per system or user.

    About Gateway
    Gateway (NYSE: GTW) a Fortune 500(R) company founded in 1985, focuses on
building lifelong relationships with consumers, small and medium businesses
and government and education institutions by helping clients meet all their
technology needs.  Gateway is ranked as the most admired American company in
the Computers and Office Equipment industry in a Fortune Magazine survey(1)
and is the top brand in customer loyalty and for first-time home computer
purchases of Wintel-based PCs(2).  The company had total global revenue of
$9.6 billion in 2000.  For more information, visit Gateway's Web site at
http://www.gateway.com.

    (1) Fortune Magazine, "America's Most Admired Companies,"
        February 19, 2001.
    (2) From the Harris Interactive Consumer TechPoll(SM) study of 140,000 PC
        owners who use the Internet, released March 5, 2001.
SOURCE Gateway, Inc.
http://www.gateway.com
CONTACT:
Media, Lisa Emard of Gateway, Inc.,
+1-949-609-4496, lisa.emard@gateway.com