Emachine E3010

I purchased my emachine E3010 in 2006 from staples office stores. It wasn t my original choice, in fact it was a replacement for a defective Acer laptop. All I was looking for at the time was internet access, however the extras the machine came with have proved very useful over time. The casing and chassis of the e3010 are excellent quality, the remodelled sleek black modern case designs with silver trim look so much better than Emachine pre-gateway days. They are also considerably small towers and save space.

Performance has always been reliable although I have noticed it has slowed with age. The bright blue led on the front has faded from blinding neon to a kind of faint blue. The fans were also considerably noisy so I replaced them with quiet akasa superiors. I also found it necessary to upgrade the tiny 256Mb ram to just over 1.2Gb. This only cost me 25 pounds and is incredibly easy to fit. The 80 Gb hard-drive is small compared to todays standards (my custom fusion colossus has 320 Gb) but it's adequate for a back-up computer which features a dvd writer. The media card section section which now replaces most 3.5 inch drive bays on modern pcs has proved very handy. The ability to simply unplug media cards and push them in the front, (no messy cables or waiting ages for data to transfer) is great. The dvd player has been very reliable and still plays movies competently, a good quality drive. 4 usb ports aren t really enough these days but coupled with a hub, ive been able to connect a variety of useful hardware.

I have read so many snooty elitist comments on emachines by trend setters who set the tech standards for society on their geeky internet message boards worldwide. The truth is, the components in this machine are now top notch. All the good brands are there, Seagate barracuda, intel, samsung etc There are also a few dodgy components inside factory standard emachines (like foxconn) but the myth echoing emachine motherboards are inferior is baseless in my experience. I recently treated mine to a widescreen lcd monitor and now I've upped the ram, I'll probably install windows vista next. All in all, these are super value for money. They're great for beginners on low income who otherwise wouldn t have access to computers but they're also useful for intermediates and experts who know what they re doing to. The virtually unheard of graphics card has handled some games well and media applications such as early versions of nero, although this pcs primarily designed for the basics. Considering they have this rep for being almost disposable computers that 'nobody can upgrade' , I've done pretty well with mine. I would buy this brand again easily over packard bell, e-systems, Acer and perhaps even dell. A PC that isn t just for "the kids".