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Gateway's heyday was when they could make $400 plus profit on a desktop. I remember in 1995/96 all the military folks overseas were buying them. They'd ship APO/FPO, and the Exchange over there carried only the brand Packard Bell. Gateway beat their price, even with shipping. I knew several people that switched to Gateway because they were sick of the PB's crapping out on them. A dependant husband on base had a PC Doctor business and made a killing working on them. Once I got back to the states and started tinkering I wound up with quite a few PB's given to me. Remember the sound/modem combo card? Ick. I threw so many of those in the trash. I refused to try to deal with them.
The bottom dropped out of the PC market and Gateway's business plan couldn't cope. Dell was already diversified enough to make it. I look at their desktop prices now and I can only wonder if that division is kept around for name recognition only. I'd guess they make their profit in that sector with their "upgrades" and those 40 dollar ink cartridges they sell.
On another tangent, the Gateway stores' overhead was killing them, and they priced their service to try and make up for it. A family friend bought a Gateway 166 mHz system. They took it back in 2000 for a harddrive upgrade. The store techs slaved a 20 GB Seagate complete with BIOS overlay to the original drive and charged 350 dollars.
This post is strictly opinion, maybe I got something right.
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