Only Expect average performance
Written: May 04 '05
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Pros: Bios, monitor clarity, memory 512
Cons: slow, no floppy drive, cd access
The Bottom Line: If one wants to shop to get the most value for their dollar one can easily supersede the e-machine for quality.
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| lkm111's Full Review: eMachines W3050 PC Desktop |
I hovered in the electronics section of Wal-Mart perhaps longer than I should have allowed myself. My home PC was getting tired and I was spending many hours tweaking my HP Pavilion back into operation as almost any interruption appeared to make it jump the track
I was looking for a fairly price enticing machine which had ample memory, motherboard, bios and chip so I could add on more peripherals when I got it home. I wanted to find a roomy case, slots for 2 gigs of memory, several PCI slots and an underworked power supply.
I loaded up the E-Machine 3050 and took it home. When I got it home I pulled the cover and found it had 512 gigs of memory and an 80GB Seagate hard drive. I wanted to supplement that with a 250GB Western Digital. One feature I really liked was the Phoenix/Award bios which offered many intrinsic tweaking opportunities. When purchasing a machine if you have any savvy at all you will want to purchase one which gives you some options and wiggle room to fine tune for performance and comfort. I recommend highly the Phoenix/Award bios which is a major improvement over the old Phoenix Bios of not too long ago. With the mention of these few things I feel I have showered this e-machine with all the praise it deserves.
While I like the processed metal mounting guts inside the case I feel the gage is too light and due to the design the addition of another hard drive was too big a load for the drive cage. Dell's design is much better and they use a heavier gage metal with little plastic.
The mouse and the keyboard were serviceable but felt cheap and the mouse was cumbersome and slow.
The 17" flat screen display was fine but it was overly heavy and the mounting ring didn't allow enough adjustment for tilt.
I was extremely disappointed to find no 3 1/2 drive. Instead they expect you to do everything with cd now which in reality just becomes a nuisance because many is the time you want both the disc and diskette for your applications.
It cam with Athlons XP 3000 but front side bus only put out 233. Chip speed at 1.9ghz was relatively slow by today's standards as well.
I think you might like the charming silver and black color set off by two big round on off switches for the monitor and tower that were flooded with the encircling blue fluorescent light. Young people might say, "cool!"
The integrated Navidia video adapter and sound car were at best just "okay" The two little speakers offered were so light if one had computer set up near a door it would be cause for caution as the breeze from a slammed door might knock them off the desk.
Many of you set your tower down under your feet or off to the left or right. Turning it on is a matter of feel on most machines like getting access to floppy drives or cd roms. However this machine was annoying in that the off on button protruded only a sixteenth of an inch out from remainder of case making one almost stand on their head to get down to physically see what you could NOT feel.
To be sure the E-Machine at $425 is not a lot of capital outlay and its fair to say ones expectations should not be too much. However the 2400 Dell appeared to offer much more for $125 less money.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): $425
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
lkm111
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Member: Leslie Moore
Location: Bozeman
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Jack of all trades; Master of none.
Our light time fades; a disaster for some.
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