Help computer people

[stealthislj]

I have a chance to get a business type EMachine for a high end consumer price (649).

Is EMachine reliable? I liked the look and performance when I used it at Costco, and the Athalon processor is what I have now. They are faster than their speeds imply.

So, opinions, horror stories, warnings?

Thank you!

XOXO

Comments

[kwins]

Actually, AMD converted all their speeds to the Intel equivalent. I don't want to get too in depth into computer architecture, but they have different instruction sets, so instructions will take different numbers of clock pulses on different processors. That's why you'll see an "Athlon 1800" or something, and they don't write the unit (mHz). The 1800 Athlon is comparable to an 1.8 gHz (same as 1800 mHz) Pentium, but it's not actually 1.8 gHz on the Athlon chip.

As for eMachines . . . get a protection plan, and you're safe, even if it breaks. I'd say get a product protection plan on anything, since a computer is a pretty big investment, and nothing is that well made. It doesn't matter how much you know about computers; I don't know many people manufacturing motherboards or cd burners for free in their homes.

Re:

[stealthislj]

hehe I wonder if McGuyver could make a motherboard from a paperclip?

but thank you! I will probably og ahead and get this one as it looks like where I wanted to go hardware wise.

Windows XP is enough alone! I am so sick of ME and having this HP Pavilion freeze up and die when I'm trying to run Media Player, Kazaa...it's gotten rediculous.

I don't edit videos or run games, so I don't need top of the line SDRAM. I just need a bit more of it than my 175 MB.

HD space is not too much of a concern. I can't even fill my 60 gig, and this one has 80.

The main thing is it's XP, and it's a good price for the outfit, and the ports are a little more generous, it has a DVDRW, and it's got some good upgrades in performance.

I was just like whoah! eMachine? wtf is that!

Protection plan it is:)

[kwins]

I forgot to mention that my little brother brother has an eMachine, and an ultra cheap one at that. He's had it for a year now. It hasn't given him any problems whatsoever, but he doesn't exactly beat it up. It's not even connected to the internet. He just uses it to write papers, play games, and copy cds.

The memory management on Windows XP is a lot better than on 9x/ME. I got a free copy of XP Pro from school, and I've yet to see the blue screen of death in a few months of running it. Also, my clock no longer "loses time." Before, I'd have my computer on for a day, and at the end of the day my clock would be up to an hour behind. Now, I can leave it on all week, and the clock doesn't lag.

Re:

[stealthislj]

this is encouraging!! this clock loses about a minute a month, on my laptop (windows 98), I can lose 45 mins a day