What do you guys/ladies think of an eMachine laptop. PC MAg thought they were pretty good had a good rating and review. Heres' the Specs=

Windows XP Home

Notebook Pc

AMD Athlon XP-M 3000+/ 2.2 GHZ
Quantispeed architecture

1 type 1/11 Pc card slot
2 memory slots

512mb RAM
DDR333(PC2700)

60GB Hard

CD-RW/DVD ROM

Integrated Graphics
ATI Mobility Radeon IGP 320M video
64MB Shared Video memory

15.4 Screen size WXGA

Weight 7.5 lbs

Integrated Modem
Integrated LAN
Integrated Wireless LAN

802.11g Wireless Networking
RJ-11 Phone Connector
RJ-45 Ethernet Connector

Will this play any games or is it junk it sound pretty good too me conisidering I have a pentium 2 192 mb ram, 2.5 video memory and like 6 gb hard. Thanks

I am not sure about the brand because I personally have not had any experience with eMachines. But as far as the system itself it sounds good especially considering it is a laptop. I probably would go for it if I was you. Actually I just bought a laptop and it should be here the 13th. It was a Dell with a 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 w/HT, 512 PC3200 Ram, 60 GB Hard Drive, etc... I am not sure how much you are going to spend but Dell has some very good sales right now. Free Double Memory, Free Shipping, etc... Just something to think about.

With an ATI Mobility Radeon IGP 320M forget real gaming on that lappy.

○ Before you criticize a bigger man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes ○

Is that a crappy video card?? Can I replace that video card? What do you conisider real gaming? Can I play the first halflife, or Final fantasy 7, and GTA 3 I dont really want to play MMORPG games that need a monster of a comp. I just want it for them games I mentioned. Thanks for your advice though

ATI video cards have shown me best performances, ur choice of computer is great except u might want to get a later addition in ati. 128-256mb cards will definately satisfy you more. Everything else is excellent for now.

Why should poor computers exist?

Well for office type tasks, simple 3D applications and 3D games you will be OK, but for games that require anyting above DX6 the laptop is just not going to cut it.

As you may already know, IGP 320M is from the RADEON VE chip with a core/memory speed of 160/266mhz and a peak memory bus bandwidth of 2.1GB/sec. It also has only one pixel pipeline with no T&L unit and vertex shaders support, that kinda gives you an idea with regards to gaming.

Not knowing what your budget is, it is hard to tell you what to upgrade to and if you are not an avid gamer, that laptop may be more than OK for your productivity needs.

○ Before you criticize a bigger man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes ○

@ sabertooth

Hi thanks for you information, very helpfull. I had a question about your response. You said that you didnt know what to tell me to upgrade too. Does that mean that this video card can be upgraded. I thought Integrated meant it was soldered to the motherboard.

If I can upgrade the video card please feel free to tell me about any of the cards that you think are good but at a good price. Thanks again

By upgrade, I meant the laptop as a whole since I assumed you are yet to order it.

○ Before you criticize a bigger man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes ○

Yes I havent ordered it yet. I can only spend about 1000 dollars, on a laptop. I dont want a desktop.

But is that video card upgradeable and how do I found out if the video card or any video card can be upgraded? Thanks again.

You have to contact Emachines, you cannot upgrade the chip yourself. However your $1000 can get still get you something better than that Emachine. I personally would recommend something like the Mobility Radeon 9800 but that may break the bank...............;~(

○ Before you criticize a bigger man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes ○

pc mag may have given that laptop a good review but one thing they can't tell you anything about is the durability/quality of that of it
I have no personal experience with emachines, but i do know that they have a very bad reputation for quality and life-span in their computers

lately there have been weekly discount deals on laptops in circuit city and officedepot for around $600 if you are looking to sacrifice some features to save money, check out the adds tommorrow

another thing to remember is that laptops just arent good for gaming even if they do have a great video chip because of over heating issues and file swapping on their slow already-overused harddrives, but if you're just looking at playing older games like hl1 then you should be ok anyway

common sense isn't very common

It is known that Gateway and eMachines are two companies that are a "no-no" to buy from. try Dell, HP, or some other company. Although eMachines are cheap, the quality of their product is rather poor.
It will work for gaming, but when you need to upgrade in the future, it may be hard to do so.

Dell Dimension 4500
Pentium 4, 2.0 GHz
Windows XP Home, SP1/2
512 mb PC2700
nVidia Geforce MX 420 64 Mb
80Gb Hard Drive
24x4x48x CD-RW
4x DVD-ROM