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Emachines 64-bit Athlons Now On Sale
tomhudson writes "According to zdnet,
emachines, the company geeks like to make fun of, finally has a toy we'd all like to get for Xmas -- an Athlon64 on the cheap :-)"
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A $1200 system with a 64 bit processor and only 512 MB RAM? What gives? With RAM so cheap these days, it seems anybody in the market for such a pricey system would demand 1GB Ram. (Games, 3D, Video all seem like the obvious targets) Companies are silly.
The Compaq 8000Z, $1,189 after $100 rebate. Mail-order only.
eMachines have a bad rep, but they're not a bad unit. As a former Best Buy employee, the only problems we seen were the powersupply fans going out after 2 years and making a ton of noise.
Some of my former co-workers still have some of the first eMachines running as Linux servers to this day.
What is the difference between Opteron and Athlon64?
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You may like my a cappella music
You missed the part where they said the word "consumer."
I doubt even Apple's G5/OS X combos are considered "consumer" grade, and there's quite a lot of talk about the latest OS X still not being fully 64 bit, yet. Workstations are flat out of consideration for the label, of course.
Get off my launchpad!
Actually eMachines aren't too shabby. Recently purchased ones have all name brand parts, etc...not as cheap as they were back in the original days (Celeron 300-era).
I ran into the same problem myself - they don't even have a press release for it on their site. I'm wondering if this is really true or not. Guess we'll have to wait until eMachines decides to make a little more noise.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
You can't upgrade ANYTHING in it (hard-disk, memory, gfx card, processor, NOTHING)
I had a ~3 year old eMachine (which my ex-wife now has. ha!) I put a second hard drive in it and extra memory just fine. There was no AGP slot so the only option for video upgrading was a PCI card. The processor was in a socket, I never did try a faster processor.
Trolling is a art,
XP Home doesn't have to run on a 64 bit processor because the Athlon 64 processor will run 32 bit applications as well. That's what's so nice about it. XP Home will just run like it always has -- as good as MS can make it.
*jams tounge into cheek*
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
tons more?
hmm. applestore has " $1,799.00
1.6GHz PowerPC G5
800MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
256MB DDR333 128-bit SDRAM
Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
80GB Serial ATA
SuperDrive
Three PCI Slots
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem"
that is barebones. the emachine has "AMD's Athlon 64 3200+", "The $1,299 desktop also comes with 512MB of 400MHz double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR SDRAM) and a 160GB hard drive with a generous 8MB buffer for data, which helps boost performance." and "Included with the T6000 is an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card with 128MB of on-board memory, a CD burner, a DVD-ROM drive, an 8-in-1 memory card reader, seven USB (universal serial bus) ports and two IEEE 1394 or FireWire ports."
now, i might be STUPID and IGNORANT and a FOOL, but in my world half the mem, half the harddrive, suckier gfx card.. they don't really count as tons of more. did you even rtfa? or are you just fishing for a mac sympathy +5 insightful/informative? each to it's own and i'd love to have a g5 but it sure as hell doesn't have TONS more of stuff for 'few hundreds more'.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The specs are here, at least, and it was on the front of the desktop section.
3 90 092896&skuId=6186156&type=product
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1067
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSe 64bit.
A recent Seattle Times article gives eMachines kudos for good tech support, and no, the argument that crappy products need to have good tech support to back them up is a poor slander: no business could stay in business that way.
Quote from article: " If you're thinking about giving a new PC, eMachines has top-notch backup. It makes its computers easier to service over an Internet connection, and the CPU unit itself is a snap to open and self-service."
AMD will be introducing the 3000+ A64s next week. I am running off to snap a few pics of them now. All the details will be up on the Inq tomorrow morning, I don't want to scoop myself here though. :)
What I can say is:
Lots and lots of them, no shortages here.
They will be substantially cheaper than the current ~$400
Available to the public next week.
-Charlie
At full tilt avisynth eats up about 120MB. It'll do that all day, even with a complex filter, because a frame of video is only a few MB - video simply doesn't NEED any more RAM. Even on a higher end linux networked station you don't need more than half a gig, and that's on a system that doesn't even have a damn hard drive...
It's called sarcasm, people. Look it up.
Emachines changed quite a while back, at least as far back as the 533id2 (was the first new computer i ever had c.2000) The only part i found totally unacceptable was the crystal Audio integrated sound which i replaced within a few months with some I/O magic card for $35 I later upgraded the video from intel 810 onboard to a GF2MX400 for ~$100 and upgraded the RAM from 64 to 256 for some unknown amount for christmas(I assume around $100 since it was pc100) so for $500 upfront with a total upgraded cost of $735 I had a machine that lasted 2 years before i felt it neccicary to replace it and it still is being used by my brother although he wants a new system it runs all the games he plays quite well. My new emachines it the T2200SE which i have had for a little over a year now (bought it last november) and it has totally kicked ass. It seems to me that since eMachines had a bad rap in the past for bad products and bad service they have the most to lose if they release crappy stuff now or have bad customer service, of the 8 eMachines systems i have seen/worked with (3 of their new case design, 5 of the older design) the only one that had trouble was owned by someone with no computer experience and seemed to be infected with a virus or a load of spyware. They also have in their parts depot a detailed list of components for their systems going at least as far back as their 266mhz cyrix model and a list of components available to upgrade each model (good for christmas lists lol). as for system upgradeability and maintainability, unlike a certain company *cough* HP *cough* eMachines doesn't find it nessesary to rivet the thing together or use cases so cramped that you cannot upgrade without a full dismantleing.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I would agree with that. My main machine is an emachines emonster 550 (refurb from compgeeks). It's been a great little machine. I've upgraded the heck out of it - currently 512MB RAM, 128MB video card, 40 gig HD, 52X CDRW. I've been able to play SWG and the new Dark Age of Camelot expansion with good results.
What can I say...I'm a broke geek and I can't afford a shiny new machine.
I could kill you, sure, but I could only make you cry with these words
- 1.6GHz/256MB/80GB/SuperDrive - $1499
- 1.8GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $1799
- DUAL 2GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $2499
Those come with the same warranty as new ones (which can be extended to 3 years, just like on the new ones), and obviously can't possibly be terribly old units.So now it becomes:
64-bit good, but e-machines = poo. Apple != poo, but Apple costs more than e-machines...
I briefly considered whinging about how I could've gotten two 1.6GHz G5's refurb for what my dual 2GHz cost new... then I realized that wait, two of those would still be slower than my dual 2GHz...
I disagree. You can't ADD a hard drive to one very easily, although I was able to piggy back a hard drive to the cheapest emachine that money could buy (our client's decision, not ours), and I've personally upgraded memory and a processor on one.
For the average client, an emachine is all they need, and whether you like it or not, they work. We've had some installed at client's workplaces for years and have had NO problems. I also like how they don't include lots of unnecessary crap on the install (other than the usual services you'll have to disable). Just the base install, without MusicMatch, adware, etc.
Granted, this is all in the past 2 years or so that I've seen a drastic improvement. My dad bought one four years or so ago, and it's not that great of a machine. The company's methods and quality have changed, however.
For those of you interested though, I wouldn't purchase one right now. I'd wait until Windows XP 64 is included in their bundle. That way, you don't have to pay an additional $ 199.99 or so for the upgrade when it comes out.
Just my two cents.
Quadgoatboy
Athlons don't have any more of a tendency to overheat than Pentiums do now. Back before the AMD cpus had sufficient thermal production checks in various places, this was true. The Athlon 64 has just as much protection as the new Pentiums do, heat plate and all.
I am in the process of setting up an Athlon64 system. The 64-bit architecture is nice, in a techy coolness kind of way. And, the other architecture improvements, like more general purpose registers, are great.
But, the thing that pushed me to take the plunge was the "Cool 'n Quiet" feature of the chips.
The Athlon64 is the first mass-market / desktop chip to offer speed/voltage control that has been offered in laptop chips for quite a while. Based on processor load, CnQ will slow down the processor speed, in 200MHz increments, all the way down to 800MHz.
So, when you're doing light tasks like WWW browsing, MP3 playback, word processing, etc. the system slows down. When you're compiling, gaming, minidv editing, or other CPU hungry app, it goes up to full speed.
When the CPU slows down, obviously less power is used, and less heat is created. The system fans slow or stop, and the noise level goes way down.
Combine this with a fanless video card (e.g. GeForce FX 5200) and a quiet Seagate Barracuda hard drive, and you've got a very quite, but still powerful, system.
I know this is a redundant post, but I thought i'd clarify the issue a bit more. I work as a technician at Best Buy which basically means i'm pretty much a gloried salesperson who installs ram and removes viruses. eMachine computers are actually suprising decent now compared to 3 years ago; they share very little in common with their incompatible predecessors. As far as the people who keep mentionining the power supply issues, this is also a thing of the past. eMachines use normal/standard ATX power supplies and they are not 90 watts. This has been the standard for a while. Most have at least 4 PCI slots and an AGP slot. The only exception to this are the Celeron machines which lack an AGP slot, the rest of the eMachines line is just as upgradeable as your average Dell, HP, or Compaq. On any given day, I see more Compaqs or Gatesway come in for serivce than I ever do eMachines.
Sorry to burst your Geek bubbles but this machine might actually not be a complete failure for low class workstations. (is that an oxymoron?) I'll have to see it for myself.
I hear this online quite a bit, but talking to people in real life who actually own them, they're pretty happy with them. The last two desktops I've bought have been emachines w/athlons. They still perform well to this day (well, opne's less than a year old). I also recently bought an emachine widescreen laptop (m5310) that I really, really love. Redhat had some problems wiht it, but SuSE performs like a champ on it, ACPI included.
Of course Linux has been able to run on 64-bit platforms for quite some time now.
Kind of off-topic here, but so has Microsoft, at least on the server platform. They've kept it away from the consumer platform up until now for deliberate marketing reasons.
Incidentally, once you've got Windows 2000 64 bit edition running on your 64 bit server, what killer app are you going to run on it? Why, 64-bit SQL Server, of course!
now, i might be STUPID and IGNORANT and a FOOL, but in my world half the mem, half the harddrive, suckier gfx card.. they don't really count as tons of more.
The memory is definitely an issue, there's no question that the G5 should come with 512MB minimum. The hard disk space - well, depends on the user. Unless you're a hardcore gamer, the gfx card is fine. If you are a hardcore gamer, you're probably not going to buy a G5 anyway.
You also neglected to mention that the G5 does have FireWire (including one FireWire 800 port) and USB 2.0, although you did mention them on the eMachines box.
Now, for the "tons more" on the G5. It has next-generation PCI-X slots. It has gigabit ethernet built in. It has optical digital audio in and out. It has Superdrive, which is a CD/DVD burner. And, (ducking to avoid flames) it has a real operating system, not a Microsoft toy.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
OK, I'll bite
I just got one Saturday. Perhaps I got taken, it seems decent to me. They used the components I would have were I building one for a similar price (I didn't expect 2 case fans and round IDE cables). WD hard drive, NEC DVDRW, NVidia chipset motherboard. Seems solid, everything works. We'll see in a year.
There price was good enough that several pieces could burn out and I'd still be ahead.
Dewey
A couple months ago, I built myself a nice little cheap desktop for about $400. I'd say I did pretty well. Here are the specs:
Athlon XP 2000+ proc
VIA KT266 motherboard with 1 AGP/4 PCI slots, 6 USB ports, onboard S3 ProSavage8 video, 10/100 networking, and the usual motherboard stuff
256MB RAM
80GB WD hard drive
Floppy drive
16X DVD-ROM drive
48X CD-RW drive
Mini-tower case
Err sorry, when I said "built", I meant "bought an emachines T2082". Emachines USED to be crap, but these days they're using mostly off-the-shelf components. I have yet to find anything proprietary or icky about this computer. Sure I upped the RAM to 512MB and added a decent video card, but everything else is fine.
As for the Athlon64 system, it appears they released it TOO quietly... their web site doesn't even mention it.