E-machines
 

I was working on someone's computer and they were just going to buy a new one. They saw an Emachines at walmart for like $650 and asked my opinion about it. I instinctively thought it's a bad idea for what they wanted but I walked through walmart last night I saw it.

It's 2.8 ghz pentium 4, 512mb DDR ram with 17 inch flat screen monitor and dvd/cdrw. It has onboard graphics but it DOES have an AGP slot.

It looks like a decent computer and possible to be upgraded into a decent gaming PC. There's a few things that I'm still not really sure about though. Quality of parts, and tech support.

I have a very low opinion about emachines but my knowledge of the company is out of date and I've heard they've improved alot since a few years ago. So, I'm looking for some opinions whether or not I can recommend this PC to someone.

didn't gateway buyout e-machines recently?

Seems so. Gateway acquires eMachines

I don't know that it speaks for their quality though, Gateway has been known to do some pretty shady things in the past as well.

I'm curious to know if anyone has had any positive results with emachines myself, as I can't imagine anyone serious about computing owning one.

last christmas season i sold emachines at costco... the e machines were the lowest-priced models we had, but they were also the most basic machines we had in the warehouse.

e-machines has had a nasty stigma over the last few years that is the result of really bad equipment, but i feel that they've really improved their machines lately, quality-wise. if all you need is a basic machine that dosen't have lots of bells and whistles, and you're not picky about the name on the outside of your box, i say go for it. they're not poweruser machines, but for someone just getting started in computing or someone who just needs a basic internet/homeoffice machine, i'd say go for it.

the one thing i'd worry about is the combo drive. i've heard some bad things about combo drives losing functionalities (dosen't burn, stops playing dvd's, etc...), but that should be covered by the manufacturer for a reasonable amount of time. that is the one blessing of buying a branded machine, most of them have some kind of waruntee for a year or two covering the equipment in case of malfunction.

The whole Gateway/emachines merger interesting. Yes, Gateway is buying eMachines, but when all is said and done the eMachines executive team will run the new company, and Gateway will abandon its retail stores to do business through eMachine's network of dealers. So in my mind, eMachines really ate Gateway instead of vice versa. Apparently eMachines has been more profitable, in any case.

I've talked to a couple of non-power users who own eMachines, and they were happy with them. If you're just doing word processing, email, and Internet, which is all that a lot of people do, you don't need anything fancy.

I have an eMachines 366i2 that I got as a gift in 9/99. It was my very first system running win98. 4.5 years later it just went about 150 days without a restart. (it only went down from a power outage) I've never once had to replace a failed part, only upgraded parts with the exception of a winmodem that got fried. Great to live in one of the lightning capitals of the world. :rolleyes:

Now that I can build my own systems I wouldn't buy one, but I would recommend one to a n00b as readily as a Dell, given my positive experience with them.

that price point makes it attractive to buy an email system for the computer illiterate person in your life.
I wonder how they keep the price so low? Refurbed P/s's, floppy's and fans?

My sister got one dirt cheap a few years ago as she needed something no frills, basically a means of checking e-mail and getting online. I think we had fewer problems with that thing than my own system at the time...

The first computer I bought was an emachines about 6 years ago.

After the second day of owning it, it suddening made a ZAP, and an odor of burnt electrical parts came from the tower. Obviously it wouldn't restart. I called their "support" line (this was back when I knew NOTHING about computers) and they told me it was probably a fried power supply and that I would have to pay $40 to get a new one.

How about.......................................... no?

I gathered up the tower and all the acessories and took it back to OfficeMax and got a full refund. I then bought an IBM P3 500 mhz system which lasted me 4 years.

They pretty much save money on the parts that only a computer-afficiondo would know, ie. sound cards/video cards/memory (size and quality)/HDD speed.
What they say is (for example)
2.0 GHz Intel Celeron
512 MB memory
80 GB Hard Drive
48x/24x/48x CD-RW/DVD-ROM
$499
...or something like that.
The Pentium 4 would add maybe an extra 100-200 dollars but still cheap. They mostly save money on the graphics card and sound card (most likely on-board). They also get a lot of people with the high clock-rated Celerons as they are cheap and look appealing but only computer techs will know they truly suck.

I bought an E-machine. I paid 400 dollars for mine. It came with this:

17'' Flat screen CRT monitor
Printer
Athlon 2400+ Processor
256 DDR
64 Vid(onboard) Open AGP slot...
80 gig HD
CD Burner 48x
DVD player 16x

I upgraded the ram to 512 and the vid card to a 4600 Nvidia, and i am VERY happy. This system has proven great to me, (i've had very few problems with it). I would recommend it, i really enjoy mine. Plus the new ones, with the blue LED's, don't look to bad at all. :)

Ya, my rents bought an e-machine .. same specs as Stare At The Sun's. Not a bad machine really, they got it at BestBuy the day after Thanksgiving sale for like 250, plus 150 for monitor, so 400. Seems decent for 400, considering my monitor was 400 alone...

My mom insisted on getting one :rolleyes: but it seems to be doing what I need it for, except for running Counterstrike properly. I figure it's a decent deal for 450 instead of spending three times that on something I'd build myself. They're not ideal for advanced users, but for poor and lazy advanced users, they have my seal of approval.

With the right tweaks mine was a decent gaming machine. I used to turn off the desktop (killing Eexplorer) and run Taskban as an interface as it had a Run box just like Taskmgr in NT does. Along with a few game tweaks my 366i2 w/ 128MB ram and a TNT 32MB pulled 62 fps in Quake III in timedemo. Even low-end stuff can be made better. Betweeen gaming tweaks and crash-prone win98 I learned a lot about computers. My 366 now runs win2K and couldn't be happier. NEVER crashes. Win98 was shit.

I think I'll recommend it to her. I seems like a good computer and it has room for upgrade so it should last a while.

Thanks for the posts, feel free to keep discussing though.

I've owned several and I maintain a handful for a company near my house. They're basic machines with just about everything builty in.

Its all on the premise of the disposable computer, imo, since nothing inside the micro-atx case is really upgradeable (a shortage of available slots is one reason). But, for your average user not looking for blinding horsepower or extreme longevity, then an emachine isn't a bad buy. I would, however, recommend telling whomever is looking at buying an emachine that upgrade options down the line may be few and far in between. If this is a longterm purchase, then building a custom PC (or having one built) would be a much better option.

Otherwise, an emachine is a fine idea, as long as you understand the longterm constraints.

For a basic computer that gets online and checks e-mail, that is great. If you want to do anything high end, it is basically an expensive paperweight...

I work on them quite often, all the other "name brand" PCs are built with the same crap. They all have about a 4% fail rate, and they all have pros and cons.
+
Emachines is really easy to recover and they're tech supp isn't too bad.
They are roomy to work on and allow for quite a bit of upgradability.
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The recovery disk is a ghost image, so there is no selective recovery.
They were a horrible company a few years ago, and people still have a sour taste.

Buy from someplace that will take good care of you, or have good friends that can help you out.

Unless you're a computer nerd like me, you can't beat a working complete computer system for 400-1000 USD.