eMachines kicks out new desktop lineup for Vista

There's a good chance your dealing with some eMachines boxes when the "high-end" boasts a hefty $530 pricetag. The Gateway-owned budget PC builder has a new lineup of desktops out today to support Windows Vista, ranging from the Celeron-based T3604 to the Pentium D T5224. In the low-end, the T3604 sports a Celeron D 356 3.33GHz processor, with 512MB (hardly adequate for blazing Vista performance) of RAM, a 120GB HDD, CD-RW/DVD combo drive, Intel 950 graphics, Vista Home Basic and a $350 pricetag after a $50 instant rebate. Next up is the T5082, which runs a Pentium 4 631 3GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, a super-multi DVD drive, 15-in-1 card reader, ATI Radeon X300-based integrated graphics, Vista Home Basic and a $400 pricetag after the $50 rebate. Finally, the T5224 really does it up fancy for an eMachines box, including a Pentium D 820 proc running at 2.8GHz, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD, super-multi DVD drive, card reader, Intel 950 graphics (bleh), and Vista Home Premium. The box is Viiv compatible, and will run you $530 after the $50 rebate. All of the PCs have 5.1 surround sound, DirectX 9.0 graphics, and a PCI Express x16 slot for upgrading the graphics -- which seems highly advisable. You should be able to find these things at retail outlets before too terribly long.

[Steven @ Jan 30th 2007 7:45PM]

I saw all 3 them at Best Buy today. They run fine, except the cheaper version, even on basic celeron lags.

[myscrnnm @ Jan 30th 2007 7:56PM]

That's kind of stupid how the $530 model has worse graphics than the $400 model. But still, pretty good values.

[Zadillo @ Jan 30th 2007 8:02PM]

What kind of power supplies do these usually have? I am wondering if it would almost be required to upgrade the PSU as well as installing a GPU.

[LoganT @ Jan 30th 2007 8:06PM]

It's usually around 300 watts.

[greg @ Jan 30th 2007 8:14PM]

If any one buys a emachine make sure to buy a QUALITY powersupply and that it gets enough cooling!

[Bryan J Busch @ Jan 30th 2007 9:05PM]

You misspelled "you're" here:

There's a good chance your dealing with some eMachines boxes when the "high-end" boasts a hefty $530 pricetag.

[Eric @ Feb 2nd 2007 12:06AM]

Not a bad deal, especially the last one.

[rogersmj @ Jan 31st 2007 9:44AM]

^ Thank you Bryan, I was just coming in here to make a comment on that myself. It drives me nuts. I don't expect the people on blogs to write like professionals, but I do expect them to know fourth grade grammar. Your = possessive, as in "That's your computer," and you're = "you are".

[Jeff Woelker @ Jan 31st 2007 1:00PM]

What's with the eMachine bashing? A computer is a computer, except for the 1% of computer users that are totally l33t.

Also, it's a sad day in computing when we need statements like this: "with 512MB (hardly adequate for blazing Vista performance) of RAM." What is Vista doing that is so fantastic that requires upwards of 512 MB of RAM? Bloatware indeed.

[James @ Jan 31st 2007 5:56PM]

Jeff, the fact that Vista is bloatware is irrelevant; the problem is that these are supposed to be "equipped for Vista", and at least one of them is not. I would argue that none of them are, since all have shit-or-worse graphics cards, but that's beside the point. I had hoped that Vista would spur the arrival of cheap-ish consumer-level machines with a decent 3D card, but so far it hasn't happened. People are still selling laptops (and apparently desktops) with useless Intel integrated graphics as "Vista-ready". We'll have to wait for the wave of consumer backlash when they realize their new computers can't use roughly half of what Vista is supposed to do for them.

[rj @ Jan 31st 2007 6:01PM]

'Your = possessive, as in "That's your computer," and you're = "you are".'

Thanks guys. It's always great to take a break from the insightful comments on the posts here and read a little spelling primer.

[stigma @ Feb 2nd 2007 4:31PM]

I recently helped a friend set a t5082 that he just bought from best buy, even after i removed all the unnecessary startup junk it still runs dirt slow. within 5 mins it had already crashed..not impressed. i think my old AMD K2 6 runs faster. oh well.

[wendy feamster @ Mar 15th 2007 5:40AM]

I just bought an emachine T3604. All I do is email and ebay. But I need speed for ebay, I sell alot. I have not opened it and am wondering if this will do the job?? Thanks!!