Before I start, let me first say that this is just my view.

Gateway notebook personal can be split into 2 groups: ones with AMD processors and ones with Intel processors. The quality standards that Intel places on the manufacturers of its motherboards are much higher that AMD's. In my experience, this has shown itself to be true in my experience with Gateways. AMD processor motherboards have been less reliable in the Gateway computers I have dealt with, usually going bad in 1 to 3 years. The Intel ones, on the other hand, have been quite reliable. They've usually gone obsolete before anything really went wrong with them other than the usual hard drive at about 4 to 5 years.

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Well i can state i dot care for them but everyone is going to obviously have their own thought. I have never had much luck with Gateway and ive been in the biz for 16 years fixing pc's laptops printers etc etc. I personally like Dell and Toshiba at least those 2 laptops ive had the most experience with have lasted the longest meaning no motherboard failures after a year or two. Now Compaq and gateway i have had a lot of failures with the motherboards, so that's my 2 cents.
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I liked my gateways performance but it only lasted about a year and a half and I started to have lots of problems including overheating(even though I cleaned it regularly) screen problems, charging port, and a couple others.
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I used Gateway for a while but now I use a lenovo thinkpad. My gateway had lots of problems and after sending it in twice I switched. Lenovo has been very reliable for me it. It has met all my autoCad and Rhino demands perfectly.