Slashdot Mirror

Omega1045 writes "Our friends at News.com.com.com are reporting that one of the first notebooks powered by the 64 bit Athlon will be made by (drumroll, please) eMachines. Slashdot has mentioned eMachines venture into 64 bit Athlon technology before. You also might note from this past press release that eMachines claims to be the 3rd biggest PC maker in the US. Hopefully this will have the dual effect of pushing the new chip into the market, and keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me."

waldoj writes: "Intel has announced their "Dot.Station," a Red Hat-powered Internet appliance. With a price around $500, I think I'll just buy an eMachine..." I wonder how much the marketroids were paid to come up with the name... the article is fairly skeptical, and I don't see enough non-vapor to know for sure.

Viking Coder and Rares Marian sent in submissions asking about recommendations on systems for high quality video editing. They have concerns about the hardware and the software necessary for such tasks. I figure all of you folks out there who have some experience in this area should be able to help them out. (Read More)

Viking Coder asks: "Hello, I'd like to get involved with Digital Video recording and editing, and I was wondering what other people were using. The iMac at first seems a good option, until you see the limited hard drive and editing capabilities. Are there any pre-packaged solutions that would make for a better system? How about Linux or W2K compatibility / support? Any Open Source solutions to what would be obvious roadblocks?"

"So, I've been looking to build an eMonster 550R from eMachines, with a $500 DVRaptor from Canopus, also loading in a 30G EIDE (UDMA) HD, and Adobe Premiere 5.1, running everything from my (company's) Sony DCR-TRV103.

Am I in for a rude shock, or am I going to love what I can do? Are there other options I should be aware of? Will uLead's Media Builder (?) blow me away, or is Adobe the way to go? Is there an obvious winner card that makes the DVRaptor look silly? Is a 30G UDMA enough? Any caveats? (Like, 7,200 RPM for instance?)"

And from Rares Marian: "What tools, OSes, platforms, and hardware do I need to put a good machine together? I'm currently considering the following:

• Platform: Athlon 700, Alpha, G4, SGI
• OSes: Linux, Windows, AmigaOS, BSD (are they there yet?)
• Tools: Broadcast 2000, Premiere
• Systems: PC, Amiga, Mac, Alpha, SGI
• Hardware: Linux Multimedia Labs LML33, VideoToaster

I've had some quotes from $2000 for an Amiga3K setup (hey they used it on Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, and many TV stations still use it) to an $8000 Windows Athlon based machine. Any ideas? Hint: Small Budget No Limits. (From home video to full blown Internet based publishing)"

Jade & eann write, "Not too long ago, we signed up for Free-PC, mainly to see if we could find a way around their ads. :) It ends up we just had to be patient. After the merger with emachines, they've discontinued the FreePC program and their Internet service this past week: the details are here. If you have one of these systems, it's now yours to keep. They're not even bothering to have people send back the machines."

Can Savas writes "After Toshiba's $2.1 Billion settlement of the lawsuit on the "probably" faulty floppy controller, others have filed lawsuits against Compaq, HP, Packard Bell/NEC and eMachines. I wonder where these lawsuits are heading but I guess some will strike it rich (having suffered nothing at all to boot). These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless. If any of these manufacturers end up settling or losing the suit, then there might be some real problems for the entire industry. "

It looks like emachines has trouble coming from many sides. This story at News.com makes it sound like things are so bad that the company's upper management ought to commit hari-kari. This is sad; I bought one of their early units for my wife and, even if it's not the world's greatest PC, it was a good value for the money. I'd hate to see this fine low-cost vendor go away. We need companies like this to keep the "biggies" on their toes. (Thanks go to NetSlave Steve Gilliard for this lead.)

Phrogz writes "Apple, following their July 1st lawsuits against Future Power and Daewoo for the same, is now suing eMachines for their use of an iMac-style design (the eMachines eOne). "

jplove writes "Chris Schoedel wrote that she has received a $26 refund for returning a Windows license to Emachines" The strongly worded letter at the bottom might be a good model to crib.