[NORTH STAR]

Hello Everybody

I want to buy a computer within a tight budget for checking emails surfing the web and for MS office. This week Future Shop has an offer on Emachine. It is 5082 model with P 4 HT, 512 RAM and 160 HD and they are selling for $600 including Acer LCD 17" monitor. If somebody has experience with the emachine please help me decide should I buy this or not. Thank you very much.

[John Burns]

I don't have experience with EMachine, but for $600, I would think you should have a choice of PC's out there with more than 512 RAM and 160HD. I'll bump you back up - hoping some of the experienced buyers - like AcaCandy might give you some advice. Good Luck!

[aplusboy]

I will usually respond that "friends don't let friends buy Emachines". When I owned one I had really horrible customer service from them. First they don't provide an 800 number for customer service, it's a toll call. I would often be on hold for 45 minutes before I spoke to someone who in the end would give me worthless information. I sent the computer back twice for warranty repairs. The first time it was gone for six weeks and they did nothing to fix the problems. The second time they simply lost it in the warehouse. Eventually they replaced the one they lost with a better but refurbished model. I was with out the computer for a total of four months of the first year after I purchased it. To be fair the refurbished computer worked well most of the time and I used it heavily for four years. Emachine was bought in the last few years (I think by Gateway), so maybe the customer service is better. I must admit their prices are very attractive, Thats why I bought one in the first place. I do remember the 17" CRT monitor that came with it only lasted about two years and was out of warranty when it blew. Like the warranty would have done me any good.

[NORTH STAR]

Thank you very much John and Aplusboy for your comments and feedback. Your are right their prices are attractive but quality is not good. I have read some other postings on the emachine and most people have same remarks.
Thank you very much

[Fidelista]

$ 600.00 for a machine loaded with MS Office is really inexpensive!.
Normally Office is approx $150 add-on.
Here is an example of a basic Dell , loaded with Office 2007 and 1 GB of ram..
Cost --$828. Now if you own Office already -- it would work out much different.
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PROCESSOR AMD Sempron™ 3400+ edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic edit
MEMORY 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs edit
HARD DRIVE 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD ROM Drive edit
MONITOR 17 inch E177FP Analog Flat Panel edit
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit
My Accessories
SPEAKERS Dell A225 Speakers edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell 2-button Scroll Mouse edit
FLOPPY & MEDIA READER No Floppy Drive Included edit
MODEM 56K PCI Data Fax Modem edit
My Software
PRODUCTIVITY Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 edit
ANTI-VIRUS & SECURITY No Security Subscription