Dave Farquhar at The Silicon Underground answers two versions of the same question: who bought Gateway computers, and who bought the company. The short answer to the second one is Acer, on October 17, 2007, for $710 million. Gateway had been the subject of multi-billion-dollar merger rumors with Dell and Compaq less than a decade earlier.

Founded in Iowa in 1985 as Gateway 2000 and later based in South Dakota, the company sold on a friendly midwestern image, low prices and cow-spotted shipping boxes. Farquhar notes the machines used name-brand parts, including Intel motherboards and Creative sound cards, but were finicky to service. His advice from a first job: call Gateway before touching one of their machines.

Annual satisfaction surveys in the PC magazines said the same thing every year. Average or below average reliability, best in the industry customer service. When the support got slower and HP and Dell prices came down, the formula stopped working.…