Best PC for the money; business or school
Written: Oct 07 '03 (Updated Dec 09 '04)
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Pros: affordable, easy to use, easy to set up, great mac applications
Cons: Not enough factory memory, no expansion slots
The Bottom Line: Great buy, good for school and work, good suite of included applications, powerful and easy to use
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| quickanddirty's Full Review: Apple eMac 17 in. (M8950LL/A) Mac Desktop |
I bought my eMac because I needed a new PC for school/work/play. My current clamshell iBook; G3, 333 mhZ, 6 GB, 12", simply was not cutting it anymore in the productivity department.
I did look around at Dell's, Gateway's and HP's only to find that once I added a 17" monitor, an ethernet card, a gig of RAM, an operating system, MS Office, the prices between the major PC makers and Apple are really out of whack. Although Apple demands a premium price for their products, you get all the bells and whistles at the time of purchase, thus saving you time and energy trying to incorporate all the add-ons. In the end, the eMac with all the stuff I need, including Office, was a better deal than a Dell laptop or HP desktop with comparable systems.
Apple has certainly created a great product in the eMac.
Affordable; up to a 15% discount for students
Easy to use; was on-line with my cable modem in 5 minutes,
Fast; as fast as my 2.3 GHz HP at work.
The cd burner works perfectly and the dvd player is a nice option.
The 17" (16" viewable) is also very nice to have as well.
As with everything out there, technology is always changing and not everything will be as great as it seems. In order to have a great experience, you should upgrade to at least 512 MB of RAM (this applies to all computer systems as well). This improvement was immediate and worth the 75 bucks.
Included with the eMac is a nice suite of software:
MacOS X based on UNIX; stable and powerful
MacOS 9 for older applications
Appleworks 6.2 - comparable to MS Office
Safari 1.0 - Apple's new browser based on KHTML
Quicken 2003 - a $60 dollar value and one great application
WorldBook 2003
iTunes - for all your music needs, interfaces with iTunes Muic Store
iPhoto - easily manage all your digital photos, print an album
iCal - similar to Outlook Calendar features
Quicktime 6.2 - movie player/viewer
and to put all the software to use, there are 5 USB ports and 2 FireWire ports.
Limitations:
The fan can be a bit noisy (I previously only used an iBook = no fan; no noise) so I am still getting used to the fan
128 MB of factory RAM - recommend upgrade to 512 MB
This is the only problem that I see, not enough memory out of the box. But memory is cheap and very easy to install; just flip the emac upside down and undo the hatch.
No expansion slots
Overall the eMac is an exceptional value for the price. When you take the time to build a comparable PC and finally get to compare features and price, you will see that the eMac is a great buy dollar for dollar.
The primary use of my eMac is for school - finishing my masters and my wife finishing her doctorate. With the addition of MS Office, the eMac becomes the total work and play PC.
My $749 buy price reflects my educational discount. Regular price is $999 (as of this review).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 749.00
Operating System: Macintosh
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:
quickanddirty
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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