A Gateway experience that would have made the holidays a bit more festive for poor Bob -- if they'd had laptops in Dickens' England This letter was in the comments on my original call for nominations to the Bob Cratchit Hall of Fame, so some of you may have seen it already. But it seemed so fitting, I felt it deserved a post of its own. Scrooge’s assistant Bob Cratchit was so poor, yet he managed to create happiness out of almost nothing while his grumpy boss was miserable despite great wealth.Don wrote: About a year ago I had a customer that bought a Gateway laptop at Goodwill (yeah, a laptop at Goodwill) for $5. It had no power adapter and would not turn on. She brought it to me (a local repair shop) to check it out. I had a universal AC adapter, and with that, it powered on. But it had obvious issues. I finally narrowed those down to a bad hard drive and bad memory. After MANY attempts I finally got XP to load on it, but none of the drivers got picked up. I went to Gateway’s site and typed in the serial number to narrow down the drivers I’d need. Astoundingly, the site showed that this laptop still had over 180 days left on the warranty! I called Gateway and they sold me a shipping box with 2-way overnight shipping for $45. Next day the box showed up. Four days later the laptop came back! They had replaced the RAM (and actually UPGRADED it), hard drive, CDRW/DVD drive and keyboard. All this without any hassles at all! The lady bought an AC adapter for $60 plus $100 for labor and the shipping box. End result: A decent P4 laptop with 40GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, 15″ screen, wireless, and a CD burner for $165.”Thanks Don! That one is perfect. On a less happy Gateway note, I am still getting a lot of letters about MPC Corporation (which bought Gateway Professional Business in 2007 and is now in Chapter 11). I have not been able to get any response from MPC, but I may have a some more intel on this for you as soon as Monday. Stay tuned.Got gripes? Got submissions for the Bob Cratchit Hall of Fame? Send them to christina_tynan-wood@infoworld.com. Technology Industry