Stranger than fiction
Written: Nov 08 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, fast, no assembly required
Cons: Not much RAM, virtually no expansion slots
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| buck's Full Review: eMachines etower 400i PC Desktop |
Yes, it's true! You can get a screaming machine for five or six hundred dollars. I was all set to build a computer for my wife with some pretty amazing deals on barebones systems at Fry's, when I saw an E-machine with a Celeron 400 processor, 4.5-gig harddrive, 56K modem and CD-ROM for under $500.
It wasn't perfect, for sure. It only had 32 megs of RAM, so I had to buy another 32 megs at least, and since the earthquake in Taiwan, RAM has gone way up. But it came with a $75 rebate coupon that pretty much made up the difference.
I also had to take out the modem because I wanted to put in a PCI LAN card, and it only had one PCI slot. But since I'm using it as a DSL server as well as my wife's computer, I figured I could do without. I've got an old EISA modem that I can pop in one of these days as backup, but aside from a paucity of slots, the thing works pretty well. And with the advent of USB, PCI slots will soon be a thing of the past anyway.
The E-Machine boots really quickly, which was a pleasant surprise, and it was a piece of cake to get up and running. If you're looking for a fast and cheap machine to do just about anything except RAM-intensive graphics or video, I highly recommend the E-machine.
One caveat: I didn't not contact tech support, but I've read some horror stories about them on the Web. Since they've grown incredibly fast, I would expect some growing pains in this area but I can't comment from personal experience.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
buck
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Location: Sherman Oaks, CA
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 12 members
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