E-machines

I've read some other posts suggesting that emachines are less than the best....

A client was sold an Emachine (celeron 600, 32Meg ram!!!!, 8.4 gig HD with millenium installed) by another vendor. I have been asked to evaluate the machine....
My first impressions are not good.

The question I'm asking is: Do Emachines work with 3rd party RAM, what sort of price would you expect to pay for this machine spec (from emachines and custom build)?

I prefer quality and upgrade possibilities over cheapness, the client hasn't a clue either way but will probably quote my opinion in discussions with the vendor.

Just did a quick check on pricewatch. They have the same PC with 64 meg and a 15gig hdd for around $600 - 650. Integrated parts are more of a headache for me, because if something goes wrong, you lose the whole pc while you are swapping out the mobo, instead of just putting in a repl card. They also tend to rake you over the coals with upgrade prices.

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Originally posted by cordon:

The question I'm asking is: Do Emachines work with 3rd party RAM?

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ummm... yes emachines are the bottom of the barrel....

ummm... yes any standard DIMM should work with them as long as it is the same (66MHz/100MHz/133MHz)... heck... next to a HDD it's one of the few things you can replace/upgrade on those POS systems (and i don't mean point of sale)

[This message has been edited by pga (edited December 07, 2000).]

E-machines are goo for business because the total cost of owner is lower. SIS 630 and intel 815 are pretty reliable. Any brand of standard memory will work.

Just worked on one of these yesterday , 32 meg RAM , 600Celeron ,WinME .... customer paid $577 for it on a "weekend special " . As near as I could tell it was about $400 too much , not impressed , annother 64 meg of RAM might change my opinio9n a bit , but it should have been there in the first place.

Thanks for the comments.

I don't want to open the box in case I invalidate any warranty that the reseller put on it.

The funny thing is: The guy who sold the system to the client "didn't know what spec it was" because he's a programmer. The quoted price wasn't itemised, but i think it must have been around $400 to $500.
Ah well, maybe the client will ask me before buying another system.....

Usually my only concerns with emachines are
1. Modems that blow for no reason
2. Power supplies that fail routinely after 4 months, and then spending $50+ dollars on one to fit their evil case design.
3. Trying to add a "real" video card, oftimes disabling the on board one does not remove it from windows, and causes headaches

Check out www.resellerratings.com to view some evaluations of e-machine. Most comments are not good.

Emachines are the worst brand currently made. It's common for motherboard connections and power supplies to fail. Support tends to be lame and many parts are proprietary. I suspect they will fold or more likely be bought out within 2 years.

Emachines have come a long way...unfortunately the peripherial quality hasnt...
1.Their modems are junk.
2.The power supplys are unbelievably proprietary.

The cpus and mobos are okay, but all in all, i wouldnt recommend one...

Actually, E-Machines could be a LOT worse...admittedly, they're small and tightly integrated. However, you CAN get replacement parts for them! They're standard...the Power supplys are standard MATX (Not regular ATX, but the smaller versions you'll see around). The PWS and mobo are wired normally, and you can transplant the whole works to a standard tower, or throw a new MATX board in an E-Machines case.

Beats the heck out of COmpaq and Dell and they're proprietary parts, huh?

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Bryan Pizzuti
CompTIA A+, CNAP
[email protected]

we own a emachine and about the only thing left from it is the mobo and processor and ram, (modem to cd-rom to even cpu fan have been replaced) and their warranty is crap all they do is send you a refurb back i chose to replace the parts now it works great

Quote:

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Originally posted by Crowbar:
Emachines are the worst brand currently made. It's common for motherboard connections and power supplies to fail. Support tends to be lame and many parts are proprietary. I suspect they will fold or more likely be bought out within 2 years.

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Actually if you remember those old trigem computers radio shack and computer city sold .. this is same brand and company but under a new name they have been around for a while (if you notice drivers and all are under trigem and also notice ami bios doesnt know the 1999 bios string ID hmmmm)

I would go with the old statement, "You get what you pay for", with eMachines this definitely is true. They have eTower models that in my experience have run horribly and cause alot of problems. On the other hand, purchase an eMonster model and I have very few people with problems. Yes the modems and power supply are pretty bad. But any moron who does their homework knows this. The problem with many people is that they buy the machines thinking they got the best price not best quality, also they do not read their warranty before purchasing the system and then whine about it. This goes for many other computer manufacturers as well.