[wplug] eMachines?

[Bill Moran]

John Harrold wrote:
> Sometime in January Vanco, Don assaulted the keyboard and produced:
> 
> | 	Why is a 2GHz Celeron a POS?  Or is it that eMachines are in general
> | 	less than desirable?  Not knowing the brand I'd almost say that $200
> | 	sounds a bit too good to be true (or at least to good to be not a
> | 	stolen laptop)  I was just looking at an eMachines AMD-64 laptop (6807)
> | 	- at $1500 it's hardly a give away.  Are eMachines junk or something?
> 
> i don't think he's looking at a laptop. as for the POS reference, think
> packard bell ;). emachines were (are?) marked toward the lowend, check your
> email and play solitaire types. as a result, it probably has a cheap
> motherboard with no-name components integrated into it.

In my experience with cheap hardware (not eMachines specifically, but cheap
hardware in general) this is the biggest problem.

A lot of these no-name component manufactures are no-names because they make
garbage that doesn't work right.  It sort of works right most of the time,
but you end up with regular, unexplained crashes and bizaar problems that
(in the end) can only be fixed by replacing the motherboard.

Not saying that's what's going to happen, but it's much more likely with
cheapo hardware than with someone like Asus.  We've had particular
difficuties with motherboards made by Matsonic.

> my understanding is
> that they don't have the upgrade options most other pc manufacturers (like
> a dell). so you may only have one pci expansion slot, it will most
> definitely have a win modem, perhaps no extra memory sockets, the cpu may
> be soldered to the mb, cheap video card, etc.
> 
> if you just want to use it as a router, it'll probably work like a champ
> though.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com