Dell was on fire during the 90's. Gateway started to flounder later on in the 00's. Use to work for them until I was made redundant, they had some cool stuff under development that we had a sneak look at, at the time.
Had a Commodore 486-sx25 back in the day was a couple of $1000 and later on bought a Sound Blaster card for $500, top of the line stuff. NZD of course.
Was a huge leap up from my A500, although have more of a bond with the A500 and missed that more when I sold it.