Please Tell Me About E-Machines

[casey jones]

I saw two new E-Machines at Wal-Mart yesterday..they are XP! I will buy one if anyone can tell me are they good PCs does anyone run them?

Cheers

Casey:d

[Joe P]

I'm still running an E-machine since 2004. The only problem I've had was when the Hard drive had a smart failure, but that was made by Seagate anyways.

[TomSteber]

I had one. Notice the word "had". Had to replace the DVD writer. Company sent one, no big deal. Then the Mother board fried.

Had a friend canabalize and turned it into the machine I used for quite awhile until I just replaced with a refurbished Dell.

I highly recomend buying from Dell's scratch/dent/refurbished section online. One thing though, you may have to wait awhile for one you want to come along. But when one does, act fast! It won't be there long. Sometimes just minutes to a day. Got mine with 2.33 core 2 duo; 3gigs of ram; 256meg card; 500gig HD; no monitor though. But with XP! All for a little over $500.

[OBIO]

E-Machines are okay if you don't mind a general lack of power, no expandability, substandard parts......after all you get what you pay for! My in-laws have an E-Machine that is maybe a year old...and it is slower than the old P3 800meg system I had up until last summer. Celeron processors are the most common ones used in E-Machines....and Celeron processors are half of a normal Pentium Chip..so right from the start you are running with half a brain.

Skip the E-Machine and go for the Dell Scratch and Dent like Tom mentioned. I have not purchased from Dell's Scrtch and Dent, but for equal money you will get far more system.

OBIO

[Willy]

A friend of mine that repairs computors for a living loves e-machines. He says they keep him in business. One problem he has mentioned is that the cases are so small and packed that there's not enough room for good airflow to cool things off properly.

My comp was put together in his shop. It's been pretty much rock solid for 6 years now. Mrs Willy's newest is a year old Dell and it's been pretty good for her, but she doesn't flight sim either.

[Planes-11]

E-Machines are okay if you don't mind a general lack of power, no expandability, substandard parts......after all you get what you pay for! My in-laws have an E-Machine that is maybe a year old...and it is slower than the old P3 800meg system I had up until last summer. Celeron processors are the most common ones used in E-Machines....and Celeron processors are half of a normal Pentium Chip..so right from the start you are running with half a brain.

Skip the E-Machine and go for the Dell Scratch and Dent like Tom mentioned. I have not purchased from Dell's Scrtch and Dent, but for equal money you will get far more system.

OBIO

I have been flying my Dell Dimension 2400 (XP) since 2004. I actually bought it with FS9 in mind, and it has proved to be a steady work horse over the years, with no problems at all. Sticking with the brand, I also have a Dell Vostro 1000 Laptop (Vista), bought for coms only. Dell is like the old Willys Jeep, robust, hardy, good to look at and a hell of a lot of pleasure to boot...:d

[Wulf190]

I'd still recomend building your own. The parts quality will (or should) be better, and you know what you put in side it.

Heres a 'budget' set up.

Intel 7200
Gigabyte EP-35 D3SL MoBo
GSkill 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
Nvidia 9800GT 512mb video card
Cooler Master 690 case
Corsair 650 watt PSU
LG DVD burner/drive
Windows XP pro SP3
Apevia Keyboard and Mouse

Total: $742

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
If you like browsing the web,Writing a few emails then an E-machine is OK.For anything else I would not touch it with a barge pole for the reasons mentioned here ealier.
As for Dell.I have a 9200 Dimension Desktop wich flies like dream.
I used to build my own but now I cannot get the parts for less than the cost of a full machine in the UK anymore.
Plus Dell will haggle over the price abit if you let them think you may not purchase.Got an extra £50.00/$100.00 of the cost by doing this.

Buddha13

[fsafranek]

We used to always keep one in the lab for low end PC testing. For some reason we equated them with the Packard-Bell line of PC's -- not a gaming PC, just general household use. They are probably fully adequate though. The fact that they are being sold with WinXP and MS isn't even selling it anymore makes me think these are old stock. If you go this route get the one with the most horsepower (CPU).
:ernae:

[wombat666]

And here's a not so 'budget' package.:d

Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83G overclocked to 3.4+G; XFX nForce 790i Ultra Chipset; OCZ 2G DDR3 1600 Platinum XTC; 2x2 XFX Geforce GRX260 896Mg 'XXX' Editition in SLI; 2x760 SATAII/300 in RAID O; LG Blu-Ray / HD-DVD Combo; Creative X-FI XtremeGamer; Coolermaster Stacker 830SE Black; OCZ 1010W GameStream PSU; Thermalright Ultra-120 xTreme Heatsink&Arctic Colling 120mm; 24" Samsung Widescreen LCD; Saitek X52 and Saitek Pedals combo.
Total (as in everything!) cost 'built by me' was around A$5000.00.

[pfflyers]

My wife's brand new Dell just arrived FedEx a couple days ago (I'm jealous - my Dell is four years old).

She ordered it with XP, so I know you can still go that route if you want to.

[Gdavis101]

Had an Emachine years ago, never bought another one! I have worked on at least 12 Dell Computers in the last 2 month and a half, we have about 8 completely dead Dells sitting in our back room.. The best thing to do is build your own, buy good quality parts and I think you will find you can get good quality equipment for less then what you would pay for a Dell.

[pointy31]

I had an E Machine back when I was flying FS98. Absolutely no problems, I'd buy another (updated model) in a heartbeat. I have a Gateway laptop, use it for FS9, had numerous problems, no more Gateways in my future...:kilroy:

[fsafranek]

My wife's brand new Dell just arrived FedEx a couple days ago (I'm jealous - my Dell is four years old).

She ordered it with XP, so I know you can still go that route if you want to.
Yes, I do recall hearing that they put that OS option back into their Configurator. I use it and would think twice about adding Vista to any old box. I'd feel much safer buying something with Vista already installed and proven (with a few hundred thousand previous buyers).
:ernae:

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
I am running Vista on my 9200 Dell with no problems.The backwards compatability with software turned out to be not as bad as people made out.Needed to patch a couple of utilities I used and that was that.
Only problem with Vista I had was that CFS1 would not recognise the joystick anymore.

Buddha13

[Cazzie]

Built my own after hearing all from txnetcop and others. Bought all the necessaties from Tiger Direct in Durham, NC.

Tower came with a 650-Watt power supply and all cord hook-ups and fans and an ASUS motherboard.
I added:

AMD 3.3 MHz dual-core processer
4-GB Corsair sticks
500 GB Western HD
two nVidia 8800 GTS SLI
Lite-On CD/DVD Reader
Lite-On CD/DVD Writer
9-in-1 card reader
64-bit Vista Home Premium with SP1

I had no trouble at all with the build, but I did have one of my IT buddies check all of my construction and hook-ups and do the BIOS and Vista installation. No bloatware of any kind.

Caz