64 Bit Athlon Notebooks Hit the Market

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."

Comments

good for everyone

[ArgumentBoy]

I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop, but I welcome this because it will naturally drive down the prices of what I might actually buy. Way to go, eMachines.

price

[rogabean]

Quote:
"Hopefully this will have the dual effect of pushing the new chip into the market, and keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me."

This is the only part I can see as a plus to this. However I would take a guess that it will do little to the latter, in that most companies know E-Machines general reputation with the people who would be first in line to buy a 64 bit laptop, so I don't forsee that they will try to compete with E-Machines in the price category for some time.

Re:price

[garcia]

You know, for all the bad things that I hear about e-machines I can't find a single problem with the one I have been using since 11/2002. It has been up, without fail, running Linux since that day (only down for routine kernel upgrades).

Sure it was cheap, came with a bunch of crap I didn't really need, but it was a gift and it works fine.

The people who are going to be first in line to purchase a 64bit laptop are going to purchase an e-machine because that's who's offering it currently. I don't see Dell coming out saying they are, do you? In fact, I have better success with my e-machine than I did with my Dell laptop. After dealing with Dell for that particular machine I will *never* *ever* buy from them again.

I would go with the e-machine without a hesitation.

Good.

[cK-Gunslinger]

I'm glad to see some OEMs going away from the relatively expensive, and in the case of the Celeron, weak Intel architecture. You can build a heck of a General-Purpose / Gaming / Development machine based on AMD CPUs for next to nothing. You can easily put together an AMD64 3000+ / Radeon 9600 / 19" monitor system for under a grand.

I hope to see more PC makers go this route. Diversity is good. Now, if they would start considering alternate OSes as well...

Re:Regarding "desktop-replacement"

[W32.Klez.A]

This comment is a direct repost of this one.

Great, but should I wait before going 64 bit?

[Wingit]

I live in a Pentium 350 world and home and have been limping along, quite happily actually. I admin a Win2K network at work so keep one foot planted there, and have been learning and living on a steady diet of Linux the rest of the time. While eMachines don't thrill me, I am thinking more and more that I should postpone any upgrades until I can truly dive into the 64 bit world. I realize I will be stuck running plenty of 32 bit applications, but is my wait worthwhile? I am really getting the itch to get into serious gaming again but (obviously) my current system is not up to much more than the Ultima Online I played for 5 years. Perhaps this question fit better as an Ask Slashdot question, but I didn't feel it was worthy to stand on its own so I welcom your comments.

I've said it before, I'll say it again

[Theatetus]

eMachines are just a crappy as Dells or Gateways but you avoid the brand tax with them. Unlike Dell and Gateway, eMachines doesn't pretend it's selling you some top of the line system but is honest about the fact that you're getting the house Chianti, as it were.