skyth's Full Review: eMachines EZ1601-01 PC Desktop
Whats a geek like me doing with a dirt-cheap PC? Well, upgrading your PC by yourself is like mary jane to gamoholics. Building a PC for your parents and their friends, part by part, is like cocca-cola version 0 (ones made with real coke). When you start salvaging parts from your OLD PC, which started to smell like a burnt omelette because you overclocked it...well, thats me recovering from crack.
Ok I am going to buy all new parts and set up in a clear plastic tower case with liquid cooling...errrr, must, resist...the temptation.
Emachines had a clear and simple goal since its start up -- build basic, dirt-cheap PC's that are only good for browsing the internet, and writing up resumes. It seems that they were onto something, because most people do just that and nothing more. The company's under-500 PC's sold like apple, and they became the 3rd largest PC maker in the world. Last year Gateway bought the PC maker, and now even Gateway's own line-up are a bunch of cheap-computers (they used to be somewhere in the middle). So, where do the Emachines stand in today's PC market which consists mainly of low end PC's? Lets see...
Out of the package, this is actually an ergonomic piece of equiment. The silver and black accent is not the newest design out there, but its compact and does not look bad. What I expecially like on the Emachine is the 8-in-1 Flash Media Reader, which is where the old floppy drives used to be. You can easily plug and access most interfaces that somehow connect to PC's (PDAs, cell phones, PSP, etc).
The greatest aspect of Emachines have been their readyness for use. Out of the box, this computer is ready to be plugged into the internet. You can plug an Emachine in and use it for basic computer functionality for years ahead. However, you will have serious issues if you try to do anything else. Now, the package (available for $399 from tiger-direct) C3060, comes with an AMD’s Sempron 3000+ processor. The 2.0Ghz clock-speed on the AMD is actually quite fast. In addition, the 160 GB HDD is also more than what most cheap computers come with, in fact inline with most top computers today. The 512 DDR memory, on the other hand, is not enough for graphics heavy games. At last, and the worst, is the 64MB nVIDIA GeForce 4 MX graphics card. This graphics card is in fact NOT even supported with some of today's high end games. PAY ATTENTION -- GAMES SUCH AS FEAR AND SILENT HUNTER 3 will not play on this PC, not poorly, not badly, it simply doesn't play, nada, zilch, zip.
Now, if you had the intention of using this PC as it is forever and not play games, than I don't think that this really makes that much of a difference....however, I had a completely different goal in mind. Find a basic, reliable piece of junk with parts that would shine when mixed with the parts from my old PC, which mainly consisted of the 256MB video card, the extra DDR memory, etc.
This is where Emachine fails misreably. Investigating this product deeper, I found that they use unknown, cheap brands in most of their parts. Its nearly impossible to find a guide on how to upgrade your Emachine -- leave alone upgrading your chip-set (which is a must-do when getting a new video card). Upgrading your BIOS is not recommended by the manufaturer. And, as a matter of fact, your warrantee will be invalid the moment you try to do something like this. Their support is not very good at answering detailed technical questions. If you have problems plugging in the power, call them...but don't bother if you want to find out the manufacturer who built your motherboard.
I managed to get everything working finally, but it did take me sometime and a lot of re-search on the internet. Curious, I also delved deeper into my friends PC. He bought the T4010 recenly from tiger-direct for 379.99. This is actually slightly cheaper than the C3060, as its refurbished. It supports an Celeron D 2.93GHz processor, with 512MB DDR, 100gig HD and another garbage 64MB video card. Its basically the same idea as the C3060, except with an even cheaper processor and parts. You will need to upgrade immediately and you will have all the problems I had.
Overall, Emachines seem to be meant for browsing the web and writing word documents. Try to do anything else, you will need to upgrade, and when upgrading, you are basically on your own. Instead of offering dirt-cheap PC's, it seems that Emachine's these days try to provide dirt-cheap high-end PC. Well, I think its a pretty bad attempt. If you are not advanced to expert in hardware, this computer is only good for what its meant for -- browsing. Don't buy it for anything else, surely not for finding naked pictures of Megan Fox
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 399 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
The technological marvel of the eMachines EZ1601-01 All-in-One Desktop includes Genuine Microsoft Windows XP Home SP3, an Intel Atom N270 Processor, b...More at PCNation
The stylish eMachines PC has it all! The new Intel Atom processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, and great digital media features for the whole family!More at TigerDirect.com
Simplicity Redefined with a Single Solution: The eMachines EZ Series All-in-One PC bundle contains Intel energy-efficient processor performance, an 18...More at Amazon
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.