I do not buy junk but I am thrifty, and I have a good eye for quality. The E-monster 500a is STILL a great machine for me.

I bought it refurbished from www.ecost.com and was impressed with the entire package right from the start. This is saying alot because I work as a Civil Eng. Tech. and have an 800mhz Dell at work. The big difference is that I didn't pay for that one.

I did replace the modem with my favorite brand - Diamond Supra but thats OK. Modems are pretty cheap, even a good Diamond.

I also popped in a little more memory that I had laying around - taking it up to 192meg ram. To make a long story short I'm still buying upgrades and stuff for it because I know I'm going to have it for awhile.

I paid less than $500 dollars for it from E-Cost and with more memory, new modem, CD-RW, and sound card w/SoundWorks speakers - I still have less than $800 dollars in it. And its a great machine with good quality parts.

And the best part is that I know I'm going to have it for a while and their's more stuff I can buy. The DVD works great and my games couldn't be better with the ATI video card. I'm thinking about putting in a TV in/out card from 3dfx. Oh well that's another story.

Based on my experience with this E-Machine I would buy another. Its not the most cutting edge machine but I haven't been disappointed. The CD-RW I put in it writes faster than some $500 dollar CD-RW's I have at work. I have a $500 dollar cpu with a $100 dollar CD-RW and can duplicate game CD's in 7:30 minutes. Not too shabby. Its has to be the E-Monster.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 489
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: 64
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20