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emachines any good?

G

grjr

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
Messages
1,921
An aquantance of mine knows I am into computers and they need a computer for school so she asked for my help in either picking a computer or me building one for them. She wants the most bang for her buck but at the same time I know they want something that is reliable. I was looking through store ads and I found an emachine package at compusa that seems to have very good specs especially when the price is $469 after $300 in rebates.

Specs:
T2958 Minitower:
Intel Celeron D Processor 330, 2.66GHz, Intel® 845GV Chipset, PC2100 512MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD and 48X24X48 CD-RW Drives, Onboard Intel® Extreme Graphics, 3 PCI slots, 5 USB 2.0, Ethernet, Onboard sound, Windows XP Home Edition

eView 17f3 17-inch (16.0 vis) Monitor 1280 x 1024 .25 mm (diagonal)

Pixma iP1500 Color Photo Printer

I can not build a system from parts with such specs for the price, what are your guys opinions on this system? BTW she is not into Gaming so that is not a factor...
 
I can't speak for eMachine desktops but, i have an eMachine lappy that i'm happy with. The system you picked out is pretty hard to beat for $470 (monitor included). I can't see how she could go wrong with a school rig such as this. Looks good to me.
 
For someone who is not an enthusiast, it should be fine. Just make sure they realize that this is an Internet/email/homework PC only. This thing is just about as far as you can get from a gaming box.

As for quality, E-Machine has come a long way the past couple of years. I wouldn't quite call it crap but at the same time, I would make sure that they get the Service Plan from wherever they buy it from.
 
Bad experiences happen to everyone at some point but that doesn't necessarily mean that one retailers plan is not worth purchasing.

It is important to find out what is covered before making a buying decision. Otherwise, you may indeed end up with an expensive peice of TP.
 
yeah I am concerned with the reliablity cause if they use parts that fail in a couple of years then it really wouldn't be worth it. Keep the replies coming :)
 
No No No a thousand times no! My summer place of employment is a computer store and well more than half of the computers coming in to our store with hardware failures are Emachines. They use sub-par proprietary parts that tend to fail frequently. And due to the proprietary nature of the parts you are required to buy through Emachines for the replacement. I am speaking from personal experience when I say that Emachines is even worse than Gateway.
 
Granted, it has been a while since I have worked retail so you may be right.

How old were the E-machines that were coming in?

What parts are proprietary?

What parts were failing?

What is the return/failure rate when compared to the number sold?
If you sell 500 Emachines and 50 come back for repairs that is a 90% "success" rate.
 
My mom bought herself a shiny new Emachines a year ago, and had me set it up for her. I got the system up and running, and as soon as XP finished booting, I got a blue screen and the system powered down. I smelled something burning. I opened the case and saw a bit of smoke. Turned out the hard drive was bad (very bad) and somehow got very hot very quickly. The top label was toasted! I have no idea how this could have happened, it defies logic. We took it back to BestBuy and exchanged it for a Sony. Yeah, IMO Emachines suck.
 
PawNtheSandman said:
I would NOT get the service plan, especially from CompUSSR.
Click to expand...

I diagree, CompUSSR's platinum service plan is great. We bought a pavilion there three years ago, and after about a year and a half it fried a hard drive, so they replaced it in about two days. Within six months I heard the click of death again and had it serviced. This time they put a 5400RPM drive in there, so I called and complained. But within a few months this drive too had failed. By this time it was almost three years after we bought the computer (which turned out to be a socket 423), and they ruled that we would have to replace the motherboard cause they thought there was something wrong with the IDE controller. However, finding an Asus P4T through HP at that time was hugely impractical and nearly impossible, so they were forced to give us a computer of equal or grater value to replace it. Since we paid almost three grand for it originally, and no computers nowadays cost that much, they gave us an HP with a 3.0GHz HT processor, 512 RAM, a DVD burner, 160gb hard drive, etc. Quite an improvement over the 1.4ghz p4 with 128mb of RDRAM we started out with.

So the moral of the story is that service plans are good if you get the top notch ones. And if any parts do fail, they will be replaced for free. But this emachines seems to be a great deal for the money, go for it.
 
I thought Gateway bought out eMachines?
As for a service plan, i really have no experience with them (Hopefully i won't on my eMachine 6805 lappy). I build my own desktops so i don't have a service plan. If i purchased a store bought comp, i'd opt for the plan. No one knows if it'll break and if it does, it always happens at the worst time possible.
 
That is a good point, the majority of systems are over a year old. The most frequent failure occurs in the power supply followed by the mother board. The PSU in most of these models is using a proprietary connection with the case so it cant be swapped out. About half of the mother boards use a quasi-atx connection that obviously is not easy to replace. I have not seen any recent systems so it may be that they have improved their act. That would explain the lack of more up to date systems being serviced.
 
Sorry also for converting my anti-Emachines outburst into text and posting it. I was just servicing a Emachine that was very difficult to diagnose due to the fact that my test PSU would not fit. In any case, they may have improved but they have been not so good in the past.
 
I'd go for it, you are far more likely to be fine then otherwise. Emachines has done very well lately, they use industry standardized parts, etc. Just hope Gateway doesn't change things...
 
OldPueblo said:
I'd go for it, you are far more likely to be fine then otherwise. Emachines has done very well lately, they use industry standardized parts, etc. Just hope Gateway doesn't change things...
Click to expand...


The head guy at eMachines took over in the merger
 
Pack Rat 24 said:
The head guy at eMachines took over in the merger
Click to expand...

Nice. Its hard to build those basic systems for friends and family and beat the overall deal emachines give you, OS and all.
 
:confused: Sounds like a bad deal to me....


Specs:
T2958 Minitower:
Intel Celeron D Processor 330, 2.66GHz, Intel® 845GV Chipset, PC2100 512MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD and 48X24X48 CD-RW Drives, Onboard Intel® Extreme Graphics, 3 PCI slots, 5 USB 2.0, Ethernet, Onboard sound, Windows XP Home Edition

eView 17f3 17-inch (16.0 vis) Monitor 1280 x 1024 .25 mm (diagonal)

Pixma iP1500 Color Photo Printer


Sure they give you printer & lan connection, but they stick you with a Celeron CPU :(

Build her one...
 
3WAYsplit said:
:confused: Sounds like a bad deal to me....


Specs:
T2958 Minitower:
Intel Celeron D Processor 330, 2.66GHz, Intel® 845GV Chipset, PC2100 512MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD and 48X24X48 CD-RW Drives, Onboard Intel® Extreme Graphics, 3 PCI slots, 5 USB 2.0, Ethernet, Onboard sound, Windows XP Home Edition

eView 17f3 17-inch (16.0 vis) Monitor 1280 x 1024 .25 mm (diagonal)

Pixma iP1500 Color Photo Printer


Sure they give you printer & lan connection, but they stick you with a Celeron CPU :(

Build her one...
Click to expand...

there is nothing wrong with the celeron processor
 
OldPueblo said:
Especially since its the "P4 version". Plenty for standard office stuff.
Click to expand...


The system is nice/cheap/affordable but why pay for water down "P4'' aka celeron d
which will not perform as well in the long run as the cheapest P4 availiable..

As for the rest of the system, its a nice deal..
 
3WAYsplit said:
The system is nice/cheap/affordable but why pay for water down "P4'' aka celeron d
which will not perform as well in the long run as the cheapest P4 availiable..

As for the rest of the system, its a nice deal..
Click to expand...

Because he can't pay for a P4 bundled system? :p
 
eMachines are not bad now in my experience. They went bankrupt years ago, reformed, started selling stuff that was not their old trash, and got bought out by gateway. I haven't had a huge amount of them coming into my shop and the ones that I have worked on have not been hugely proprietary.
 
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