Now that Gateway is gone, what does that mean for your warranty? Daniel wrote to me to lament the passing of an era: “I recently went shopping at Best Buy to help my son choose a gaming computer and was pleased to see both Gateway and Dell carried there because we had been weighing the Dell XPS against the Gateway FX. As soon as my son saw the Gateway FX, though, he knew which he wanted. The model in the store was not quite the configuration we wanted, so I told him we could go online and order exactly what he wanted from Gateway. When we tried to do that, though, we discovered that Gateway no longer sells direct. That was a shock.”It’s sad, isn’t it? I feel the same way Daniel does about Gateway no longer selling direct. (But Daniel apparently also missed that the company stopped doing custom configurations more than a year ago.) As of July, it sells only through e-tailers and retailers. It seems like only yesterday (though it was June) that I bought a computer online from Gateway. The company announced the change to an indirect model more recently — on July 27. “We believe that our retail and e-tail partners offer consumers the best, easiest and most effective way to purchase Gateway products,” said Mark Hill, Acer Group U.S. General Manager in a press release. (Acer and Gateway merged in October 2007.) The site points out that any support you still expect from a Gateway system you own will continue unchanged. But Daniel wanted to know: “Do I have to buy my extended support from Best Buy? I was planning to buy an extended warranty for my son directly from Gateway, but I don’t want to buy one from the retailer.” For that question, I turned to Gateway representative Erin Davern. She explained, “If the original factory warranty has expired, then an extended service plan is not available from Gateway.” However, if you are — as Daniel is — buying a new Gateway computer, she said, “It is possible to purchase an extended warranty directly from Gateway as long as your computer is still within the factory warranty period.” And that warranty will be serviced by Gateway, not by the retailer. Technology Industry