Thoughts on eMachines laptop
 

I noticed that the eMachines m5405 laptop was an editors choice in PC Magazine and its on sale this week for $799.99 at Best Buy. I think eMachines was recently bought out by Gateway, who makes good laptops, but would it be a mistake to buy the eMachines?



specs...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1706488,00.asp

From what I have heard, eMachines has made a real turn around in the reliability and support of their desktop computers. I don't know much about their laptops. You may be able to do a google search, check Cnet or epinions.com and see what people think about eMachine laptops, The specs on this laptop look fine to me, but I remember you said that you wanted something under 6 lbs, and this is 6.6.

yeah it looks like the weight to price ratio is swaying me to a slightly heavier model to save some money. Im just so afraid to really pull the trigger on anything. BestBuy also has a Toshiba for 1199 that is pretty appealing as well.

Yeah you are right, you pay more for a light windows laptop. Thats one of the reasons I bought a Mac. Remember, you'll want some sort of bag for your laptop. You can get them off of ebay, or find them on sale for pretty cheap.
Dell has a pretty good deal on a lighter laptop right now,

Specs
Inspiron 600m:
Pentium® M Processor 725(1.60GHz/400MHz FSB) 14.1-in XGA, 32MB Video

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

FREE Upgrade! 512MB, 266MHz, (2x256mb) for the price of 256MB!!

FREE! 24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive with Sonic RecordNow

30GB Hard Drive

Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Internal Wireless

internal 56K Modem and Integrated Network Card

6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery (53Whr)

Productivity Pack including WordPerfect®

Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options:
1 Year Basic Mail-In Plan

Total Price: $949.00 + $50 shipping + Applicable tax, if any. I live in Florida, so Dell taxes me, but I know they don't tax people who live in other states.

Emachines has made a huge turnaround from what they were a year or two back. But, some of the laptop models with athlons in them were being returned at an incredible rate because of overheating issues. Look up the model on google and make sure that the model you're getting doesn't have issues. Of course, the returns were happening maybe 9 months ago or so, so a new model most likely won't have issues. Also, please bear in mind that many computer from many mfg's. can be bad, not just emachines.

Might also look at epinions.com and see what people who have the laptop say as well.

what are the specs on the emachine?

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home
Processor Class: AMD Sempron
Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
Hard Drive Capacity: 60 GB
Hard Drive Speed: 4200 rpm
Wireless: 802.11g
Screen Size: 15.4 inches
Primary Optical Drive: DVD-ROM/CD-RW
System Weight: 6.6 lbs
Type: Value

This isn't entirely unexpected for Athlons; everybody knows they run hot. However, the new Sempron line is much better about heat and power consumption, since it is based on the K8 (hammer) core.

I'm not sure what the quality of emachines is these days, but I bought one of their desktops five years ago and the power supply fried the second day I had it.

and on the other side of CJ I bought and emachine for my daughter for christmas in 1999 and its still running like a champ

emachine=gateway if that means anything.