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No way am I buying an eMachines computer in the near future.

It was this guy with a $200 or $250 rebate. I didn't even need a laptop and almost bought it. Still trying to decide whether to get a g5 system or build my own AMD 64 system. Any advice?

The eMachines m6807 or if you want to shave off $100 cause you don't care to do DVD burning, the M6805.

These laptops kick ASS. Ive had an m6805 since launch and I fucking love it. First, the display is like sex on LCD. The keyboard has a great feel to it, better then some crap desktop keyboards Ive been on. Obviously, you can't game with a touchpad but it works just fine in RTSes. With the 4 USB ports, pluging in a nice optical mouse is no big deal.

This machine rocks. When I use AutoGK I normally get 24+FPS on my encodes to XviD. I can play UT2k4, BF:Nam, Far Cry and more on my "ATI(R) RADEON(TM) 9600 Discrete Graphics with built in 64MB Video RAM." 802.11g means Im killing your ass naked while in bed.

But its an eMachines? Well, before 2002 I would have stopped at the name too. However, being a true tech gadget nerd, I don't let a brand name determine my picks. I let the features and #s speak for themselves. I did a review back when I got it and I still love it love it love it. AND FOR UNDER $1500! I received $250 in rebates and spent $189 on the 3 year warrenty.

Speaking of which, that was the final straw that sold me this thing. Dell, HP, Compaq, WHATEVER -- Laptops BREAK. Maybe the screen, maybe the hard drive, modem, network card, etc. Something is BOUND to happen to a portable system in normal day to day use no matter WHO makes it. This laptop is VERY sturdy so I don't worry about that. However, I know that taking it to class and going from full to E on the battery day in and day out is going to cause some loss of charge on that thing. Guess what? My battery is covered. So is my screen, hard drive, modem, network card, etc. All for $189. The only warrenty that comes close is HP's and according to the fine print, you even install a program that wasn't there OEM, you are in technical violation. It is also considerably more expensive.

If you want a kick ASS laptop, then seriously, pick this bad boy up.

The eMachines m6807 or if you want to shave off $100 cause you don't care to do DVD burning, the M6805.

These laptops kick ASS. Ive had an m6805 since launch and I fucking love it. First, the display is like sex on LCD. The keyboard has a great feel to it, better then some crap desktop keyboards Ive been on. Obviously, you can't game with a touchpad but it works just fine in RTSes. With the 4 USB ports, pluging in a nice optical mouse is no big deal.

This machine rocks. When I use AutoGK I normally get 24+FPS on my encodes to XviD. I can play UT2k4, BF:Nam, Far Cry and more on my "ATI(R) RADEON(TM) 9600 Discrete Graphics with built in 64MB Video RAM." 802.11g means Im killing your ass naked while in bed.

But its an eMachines? Well, before 2002 I would have stopped at the name too. However, being a true tech gadget nerd, I don't let a brand name determine my picks. I let the features and #s speak for themselves. I did a review back when I got it and I still love it love it love it. AND FOR UNDER $1500! I received $250 in rebates and spent $189 on the 3 year warrenty.

Speaking of which, that was the final straw that sold me this thing. Dell, HP, Compaq, WHATEVER -- Laptops BREAK. Maybe the screen, maybe the hard drive, modem, network card, etc. Something is BOUND to happen to a portable system in normal day to day use no matter WHO makes it. This laptop is VERY sturdy so I don't worry about that. However, I know that taking it to class and going from full to E on the battery day in and day out is going to cause some loss of charge on that thing. Guess what? My battery is covered. So is my screen, hard drive, modem, network card, etc. All for $189. The only warrenty that comes close is HP's and according to the fine print, you even install a program that wasn't there OEM, you are in technical violation. It is also considerably more expensive.

If you want a kick ASS laptop, then seriously, pick this bad boy up.

the whole 'PCs are cheaper than Macs' theory is gonna get a lot less credence.

There are low-end Macs, mid-range Macs, and high-end Macs. There are low-end Winboxes, mid-range Winboxes, and high-end Winboxes. However, there are sub-low-end Winboxes such as eMashit and Microtel PCs, but Apple makes no sub-low-end Macs.

AOL was not the first company to deploy an instant messaging service that was availible internet wide, ICQ was and that is where the whole cyber-sex thing started. It was easy to find a partner via ICQ and it's random "Men Seeking Women" (etc...) friend finder was a god-sent to helpless, love-sick nerds everywhere (all-be-it porly sorted and managed). Simply put, AOL took an existing technology, put a family friendly coat of make-up on it and a "I don't like those dirty bad nasty words" fuction and called it good for a mere ~$23. Once again we've seen a monopoly take an existing technology, made it friendly, then made it availible. The only step that they're missing from various other monopolies is making it cheap. The last thing most of us will ever dream of seeing is an AOL user switching over to a better, faster connection.

i think most people feel a little more secure doing their banking on a single iseries machine rather than a bunch of emachines held together with bubblegum and bandaids (okay so that is a little harsh). i guess what i'm saying, is that the mindset of pc makers and mainframe/midrange makers are VERY different. pc makers don't worry too much about redudency or reliability. 'that's microsoft's job', the common thinking goes. i will say it is a lot easier to do things right when you control the entire system (like ibm does). you can set the rules, and if you do it right, you don't step on any toes...

Actually, eMachines shipped several of their eTowers with StarOffice 5.2 a couple of years ago. One of the ones we bought for the office came with it preinstalled. On the brief look I just took on their website, I see no mention of StarOffice or OpenOffice; my guess is that 5.2 didn't fly with the consumers, so they went back to the traditional MS Works...

Just my $.02...

Last year, Apple Computer sued eMachines, Inc. over the similarity of an eMachines wintel computer to the iMac.

The basis for the suit came from law governing the apparel industry, called "trade dress." The law is intended to protect Designer clothing from cheap look-alike knockoffs.

Apple won the suit, and eMachines had to withdraw that product.

The applicability of this to the themes is left as an exercise to the reader.

Yeah, but for $400, they're pretty much disposable. I use 'em for servers. No need for USB or a modem. As long as I back up regularly, I've got no problem with one dying.

But I've got to admit that I bought my main one 12 months ago and it's run continuously since then. No problems at all, not for a moment. Running Linux, of course. :)

Others that I've used tend to have hard drive problems, though nothing critical. Just the occasional error printed to the screen about having to reset. Like I said: $400, why not?

-Waldo

I never said I wanted "the best" - I know how much prices vary, when it comes to this stuff. (4 to 5 orders of magnitude.) Pointing out my desire to use a DCR-TRV 103 was, as you pointed out, a very consice way for me to say exactly what level of product I would be happy with - I think for the money ($649), it can't be beat.

You're right - I'm obviously not high-end. However, I will use whatever system I buy, and I did two days of research before I posted my question. I wan't satisfied with the information I found (and I had run dry on my sources), so I played my Nerd Trump Card - I Asked Slashdot. Unfortunately, my strong Intel bias limited me from finding the G4 information that I needed, making me look like an idiot to people like you. If you unintentionally overlook all the Mac DV editing options, the $499 Canopus Raptor with the full Adobe Premiere 5.1 (together) starts to seem pretty good. After looking at the Raptor Requirements, the eMonster 550R looked like more than enough machine (once you upgrade to about 256M of Ram, and toss in a second hard-drive at about 30G.) Granted, I prefer home-brewed solutions, but the couple eMachines we have at work stack up fairly well, for the price we paid for them. It's also a lot easier to describe a home-brew machine by pointing to the closest consumer-level product...

I don't want to shoot the next Star Wars; I was hoping I could make something that looked 1/10th as cool as El Mariachi. (If you don't know about El Mariachi, then it's hard to imagine you know anything about amateur film-making.) I'd like to make something maybe 5-10 minutes long, for my first attempt. Think "Bedhead", but in color. I believe this is a realistic goal, since Robert Rodriguez says he thinks that digital video is the wave of the future - that young film-makers are going to swamp the biz with fairly high-quality films for dirt cheap. I don't think he'd say that unless he'd researched it some, and he's got far better connections and a lot more money than I do.

Anyways, thanks for the unwarranted criticism - gave me something to stew over.

P.S. If most of the $7000 spent on El Mariachi was on buying and developing film, and if I spend $7000 on digital equipment, do you think I'll be able to come close to its quality? (An Arriflex 16S Camera compared to a Sony DCR-TRV 103?)

Hats off to Apple for making their iMAC look more interesting than anything else on the market.

However:
How relevant is this copy-chasing legal brigade when you consider that the eONE, which may have looked almost identical to the iMAC when it was first shown (very little difference in fact) , was then revised to look as the product does now on their website compared to the iMAC (please spare me the 'Future of the Internet :)

It is clear that the eONE has been substatially restyled to avoid having the lines and general 'look' of the iMAC: How can Apple say that this is a copy violation? Compaq, Dell, Olivetti, IBM, Fujitsu etc all might as well start taking each other to court over who owns rights to the 'grey box on the desk' design.

At the end of the day though, it seems obvious that the eONE brought this upon itself, by setting out looking so much like the iMAC, a restyle late on wasn't going to save it in the eyes of the Apple lawyers.

My appologys for not being able to find a picture of the original eONE design :)

The iMac has sold almost 2 million units in one year! If Apple had not created the iMac, can you name any company that would have created a computer that would have caputured so much attention (from ORDINARY first time computer buying people?)

emachines.

I've actually considered this. You could take a $400 box, maybe double that for a multiport serial board, mix in your favorite Linux distribution and a bunch of old VT's or Mac Pluses and replace the system half of us used in college with something easier to upgrade, support and manage (and it would be faster).

If you were really strapped for cash, you could build a dozen of these and plop one down in each lab/building around the campus and only worry about networking those dozen machines. If they were networked, you could really extend their lifespan using coda and another $400 box with a couple of 20 Gb drives to handle the bulk of the storage (and, of course, centralized backup).

It's a Third World dream come true, for the price of a hot passport...

I have an eTower 333c and it runs linux fine. Here's a list of possible gotchas, depending on your perspective on things.

1. Need a new modem to replace the LoseModem.

2. It only has 1 serial port, so with an external modem, that's it.

3. It only has 3 slots (1 ISA, 1 PCI, and 1 ISA/PCI), so it's a touch cramped.

4. I didn't try 4Front Tech's OSS, though the list says they support the Crystal CS4235 chip. I just plugged in an old SB16, taking up the ISA slot.

5. It has only 1 5.25" drive bay, though thankfully it's externally accessible.

6. RedHat 5.1 (and I understand 5.2) ship with XFree86 3.3.2 which doesn't support the ATI Rage IIc onboard. You need XFree86 3.3.1 (or maybe a commercial X server) to support it.

Lest I seem completely down on the box, here's the good I have to say about it:

1. It's up. I have it running the SVGA driver, and it works fine, and fast.

2. It's cheap. Figure $20 for the SB16, another $20 for a 33.6, and $50 for a monitor, and we're still talking under $600 for a great box.

3. It's good enough. 32MB of RAM is fine for me. So is 2GB of HD (I decided to dedicate the other 1GB to some other OS when I heard that eMachines was only refunding $25 for it.) Anyhow, there's still that free drive bay, and HD prices have hit rock bottom and started digging.

Do I recommend it unconditionally? No. Do I think I got my money's worth? Hell, yeah. Will it work for you? YMMV.

It says that the sound is Soundblaster pro compatible and the video is Ati Rage 3d IIc.

www.e4me.com