A Decent Little PC, but Not for the Power Hungry!
Written: Oct 29 '00 (Updated Nov 09 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: solidly built little machine, good return policy, cheap to buy now
Cons: no speed demon (Celeron), small hard drive
|
|
|
| bkiser's Full Review: eMachines etower 400i PC Desktop |
I purchased this PC a little over a year ago and recently replaced it with a Compaq Presario 7478 533 mhz (see that review at http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-1798-8C08137-39DD4F3C-prod1), and now that I've used both, I can see that my eMachine wasn't that bad a PC.
It arrived quickly, and had a 1 year warranty. I am a database developer, so the first thing I do when I get a new PC is check performance. I found that the video was running very slowly for some reason, despite the fact it was a fairly high-performance ATI video card. When set to high resolution with 16 million colors, anything graphical would run very slowly. Even when dragging a window across the screen, you would see the window disappear and reappear as you moved. To make a long story short, I had the PC replaced, and eMachines was professional enough to pay return shipping and also shipping for the replacement. It had the same problem. I concluded that it wasn't an actual "problem", but that the video performance was simply poor. I spent $100 and bought a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card, which wasn't that antequated a year and a half ago, and my video problem disappeared.
That was really the only problem I had with my 400i. The hard drive was a 4.3 MB, which was usable, but kind of small. It performed okay with no problems. System setup was easy. I once actually screwed up my registry, and the restore disk that came with the PC took care of everything. It was smooth as silk and easy to use. I installed a CD-RW I'd had for a year or so, and it went right in with no problems. The inside of the Emachine was a tad small, so installing new stuff can be a pain. There's no place for a secondary hard drive, so when I had one in there for a while to supplement the 4.3 MB, I actually had to just lay it in! It's a little short on memory (32MB), but I upgraded it to 128MB and could tell a nice performance improvement. The case also has no external monitor power, so you lose the neat feature of connecting your monitor to your PC, so that when you turn your computer off, your monitor goes off as well. The Celeron processor was no speed demon, but worked sufficiently for what I do. Of course, processors are a lot quicker now, and I wouldn't want to go back to a crippled 400 mhz CPU.
The power supply blew the other day, which is the first problem I've ever had with it (and I suspect it blew because of a storm). I wasn't sure how long I'd had it, so I called the warranty department of Emachines. I'd lost my receipt, but they were able to check because I registered the PC. Unfortunately, the warranty was out, but they gave me the number of a "super-cheap" place I could buy another power supply. I called this place, and they wanted $60 + shipping for a power supply alone! So much for "super-cheap". I had my girlfriend call with a problem, just to see if they'd refer her to the same company, and they did. If you need a part and they recommend "PC Factory Outlet", don't think they're helping you out, because there's obviously some sort of "referral fee" or something going on there.
Anyway, it's a solid little machine and can still be bought online and at auction sites, in case you're a bargain hunter or looking for a very cheap PC. It should serve you well for most everyday tasks, like surfing the internet and home/office work.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
bkiser
|
|
Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 18 members
About Me:
I'm a Systems Consultant for the Kentucky Commonwealth Office of Technology.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.