I expect a replacement screen costs about as much as a new better laptop (unless you can e-bay it out of someone's bone pile and replace it yourself).
I will never again spend a penny on anything gateway (or Sony but for different reasons).
I've finally forgiven Seagate for shipping 100% bad batches of 20 Meg drives (I was out of choices).
The replacement LCD was not bad (the campus computer store was able to get one for a relatively low cost).
I hear ya regarding Seagate. Recall some friends who had problems with their HDDs many years ago.