eMachines' $300 EL1200 desktop: "the size of a dictionary"

Really, eMachines? You're honestly going to give your newest cheap-o PC this kind of tagline? Truth be told, we're not exactly sure what a standard sized dictionary even looks like (there's this thing called the internet...), but apparently, it's exactly the same size as the EL1200 desktop. Not sassy enough to be called a nettop, this here mini-tower is 40% smaller and 55% lighter than the company's second tiniest rig, and while it won't handle the likes of Crysis, it shouldn't have too many issues surfing the web and opening Word documents. As for specs, we've got a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon 2650e 64-bit CPU, NVIDIA's GeForce 6150SE integrated graphics, 1GB of DDR2, 160GB hard drive, a dual-layer DVD burner, 14-in-1 multicard reader, seven USB 2.0 ports and a $298 (MSRP) price tag. That system we just rattled off is available now at Wally World, while a slightly more stacked edition can be had at Best Buy for $349.

[TomTom2007 @ Oct 10th 2008 5:38PM]

not bad, but for $100 more, they should throw in a monitor (CRT?) or something....

[Sachin @ Oct 10th 2008 6:00PM]

that's one BIG dictionary.

[Lowest Ranked @ Oct 10th 2008 6:04PM]

Thats one irrelevant reply.

[d00b @ Oct 10th 2008 6:33PM]

Debating its wimpy specs is missing the point. The main selling point its size. 4B (Big Boring Beige Box) desktops are dead. People buy either laptops, or small desktops--nettops--for versatility. It being cheap doesn't hurt either. The concept of "good enough" is proven with the netbooks, which is the hottest segment right now. That the economy has gone to the crapper can only help this trend.

From eyeballing the picture alone, it looks to be using a mini-ITX board, which are starting to show up at the usual places. I've seen a couple of 780G ones for AMD, and Newegg has gotten some GeForce ones for Intel. The $300 price point is in line for a retail box like this, although you can probably do better DIY if you can find some good ITX case. Call it a cheap HTPC or call it a nettop, I think this will be the next hot category alongside netbooks--small size, low-power (hence low-noise), and cheap. But good enough for watching movies & browsing the web.

OK, this particular one won't do 1080p H.264. For that, we'd have to wait for a bit for the 780G/X4500HD chipsets to show up.

[Alex @ Oct 10th 2008 7:51PM]

Mac mini is better.

[Neoleeyennek @ Oct 17th 2008 2:31PM]

Do they even make CRT any more?

[Ashwin @ Oct 10th 2008 5:41PM]

Acer seriously needs to kill the eMachines brand. The only thing eMachines was good for was selling cheap desktops. With the days of desktops numbered, especially in the consumer space, and every company selling desktops in the same price range, what is the point of keeping it.

[Electromodo @ Oct 10th 2008 5:56PM]

Well, it's a very cheap desktop, that's the point. Very popular in WalMart, BTW

[Lowest Ranked @ Oct 10th 2008 6:06PM]

You're right. They need to re-brand the line as Mr. eMachine, with a teal and lime-green psychedelic scheme.

[Jeremiah @ Oct 10th 2008 6:09PM]

My question is this? Who cares that they are around? It's a $300 computer that isn't targeted at you. If Emachines and other companies weren't around, the price would be more, you know, that little theory known as supply and demand. When there are a lot, the price is low, when there are few, the price is high. Also, in the economic crunch we are in, why should Grandma spend $1200 on a computer to surf the web?

[orky @ Oct 10th 2008 7:43PM]

Grandma should spend $1200 so Engadget posters can go to Grandma's house and play Crysis

[MyHeadisFed @ Oct 10th 2008 8:18PM]

@ Lowest Ranked....I'd buy it =P ....actually no I wouldn't, my laptop kicks ass and I'm broke as shit... But it still sounds cool to me

[granny down east @ Oct 10th 2008 10:18PM]

Grandma did spend $1200+ and yes, it plays Crysis.

[plaka999 @ Oct 12th 2008 1:50PM]

@Lowest Ranked: Ruh-Roh, no one got your joke

[Brian @ Oct 10th 2008 5:53PM]

tom......, please.......... blend it.
http://www.willitblend.com/

[Sora @ Oct 10th 2008 5:56PM]

I second this motion.

[Shade @ Oct 15th 2008 4:29PM]

I second the seconding for that notion.


But seriously, this looks okay, I might buy one to use as a media server actually, nice specs and somewhat small.

[John @ Oct 10th 2008 5:56PM]

It's probably running vista where that 1 gig of RAM will not get you much performance even for web browsing.

[Javi0084 @ Oct 10th 2008 5:57PM]

1 gig should be enough for browsing the web.

[ethana2 @ Oct 10th 2008 6:06PM]

Yes, it /should/ be, but like he said, it's probably running Vista.

[ethana2 @ Oct 10th 2008 6:09PM]

Actually, let me take that a step farther.
512 MB should be enough for web browsing, in addition to many other simultaneous activities such as chatting and listening to music.

[Javi0084 @ Oct 10th 2008 6:12PM]

My laptop runs Vista and has 1 gig of RAM, I've never had any performance issues. Vista is severely underrated.

[brian @ Oct 10th 2008 6:15PM]

the link says it has xp home.

[norm @ Oct 10th 2008 6:19PM]

Actually, according to the actual press release (I guess we can't be bothered to read the linked article, can we?), the base version comes with XP Home, and is available at Wal-Mart for $300. The slightly bigger brother has twice the RAM and twice the hard drive and somewhat better integrated graphics, and comes with Vista Home Premium, for $50 more.

[Connor @ Oct 10th 2008 6:02PM]

Engadget is always hating on eMachines, just because they're cheap and do a good job for their targeted audience. affordable FTW!

[BigD145 @ Oct 10th 2008 6:15PM]

The worst computers I've ever worked on were eMachines. They were horrible.

[Niz @ Oct 10th 2008 6:20PM]

agreed why the hate? its just an affordable general use machine.

[MyHeadisFed @ Oct 10th 2008 8:22PM]

I hate eMachines because of the power supply failure that occurred on mine in 10th grade that resulted in a fried motherboard and hard drive, which caused a loss of a research project the day before the expo... still won a couple grand =]

[Mark @ Oct 10th 2008 9:06PM]

@MyHeadisFed:

This happened on BOTH the emachines (bought a year apart) I had. PSU dies, fries the motherboard, and (on one of them) kills the ram. eMachines is crap, it's that simple. Their "target audience" may be happy with it... Until it dies, and they don't know how to swap the HD into their new machine/assume that if the computer's dead the data is gone. Then they're not so happy.

[letstakeawalk @ Oct 10th 2008 10:22PM]

My emachines T3092 (AMD3000+, 160gb HD, DVD+-RW, NVIDIA Geoforce4 MX) is still humming along, and I bought it in 2004 when I went back to finish my degree. It was even a store demo model, and came with all kinds of personal crap from some store employee on it. I use it daily, with 52.2 gb of music, 38.5 gb of videos, and 16.6 gb of photos on board, and it still performs like a warhorse. Granted, I'm not a gamer, but as a media repository and for surfing the tubes, it's been a solid little box. 'Bout time to replace though...

Interestingly enough, the Dictionary sitting here on my desk (Webster's New American Unabridged 2nd Ed. 1966) is pretty big: 13" x 9" x 5". And they tell me that there are new words, added since the 60's!

[lorddshadow @ Oct 10th 2008 10:45PM]

yeah...a lot of people buy them for kids and the kids don't realize that they're not meant for more than pretty simple processes. myself included...so they mess up their computers. it's not pretty. although the pleasure of ripping that sh** apart when it finally became way too outdated was immense. it's just better to invest in a better computer. but this computer would be good for someone who doesn't need a good computer and just needs to read news on the internet or something.

[jpw21683 @ Oct 11th 2008 1:20PM]

My folks are still using my 600MHz Celeron eMachines from 2000, and have never had any problems.

However, any time I'm forced to use it I almost throw it out the window...doesn't quite compare to my quad-core.

[chris @ Oct 10th 2008 6:14PM]

I just built an intel atom based machine with 2gb ram, 500gb hd and dvd burner for less than that via newegg.
Runs mce 2005 like a champ!

[Niz @ Oct 10th 2008 6:23PM]

your right along with the Grandma that can use linux can do that, but this works for people who don't know as much and want a general use machine.

[telepheedian @ Oct 10th 2008 7:28PM]

Which is why you build it, then give it to your grandma.

[granny down east @ Oct 10th 2008 10:30PM]

I'm getting disrespected here a lot lately.
There are actually people over 40 y.o. that can use Linux, know a CPU from a GPU etc.

See if you get to come to my house for cookies n' Crysis.

[chris @ Oct 10th 2008 10:56PM]

@niz

All I was getting at it it's NOT a good deal at $300. What they are selling you
is scrapings from the bottom of the old computer parts barrel. A 160GB HD?
Really... What are those like $25 now?

[Daza @ Oct 11th 2008 4:53AM]

How is it not a good deal for $300? It includes a licensed OS which I'm sure yours doesn't, not to mention warranty on parts and labour.

For $300 I definitely think it's a bargain. I would never buy one, but I would probably recommend it.

[smarta$$ @ Oct 10th 2008 6:17PM]

Congratulations

[Phoenix987 @ Oct 10th 2008 6:19PM]

Sadly my desktop computer for almost 3 years was an eMachines. It was "decent" in specs- the 40GB HDD and 256MB of RAM made it just fly!

For the price (I think that with the monitor which still works 8 years later, and an all-in-one X1150 Lexmark printer it was $479 with rebates), it was decent for what I needed- something for school work.

And since people apparently don't RTFA:

The $298 version has 1GB DDR2 RAM and XP SP3; the one that's more expensive has Vista SP1, 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 320GB HDD instead of 160GB. Nothing else really to note that's a difference. For the price you would think it could pack a bit more processing power, but it should be an okay desktop for those kids that just need something to go online and do schoolwork (middle school age maybe?).

[Ashwin @ Oct 10th 2008 6:34PM]

@Juremiah
Well, Acer and Gateway are also associated low prices, and are part of the same company. I wouldn't consider three brands from the same company as real competition. It would probably lower prices if they mananged two brands rather than three. By the way, I was never suggesting that they should stop making cheap computers.

[Kamokazi @ Oct 10th 2008 6:37PM]

Stop posting useless comments just to spam your useless blog.

[Unknown.soul @ Oct 10th 2008 6:42PM]

Forget this, netbooks are better and they're portable = win.

[Joseph @ Oct 10th 2008 6:56PM]

watching hulu on my TV. I dont need portable and i dont need a screen.

[Rogue_Genius @ Oct 10th 2008 7:17PM]

When you can find a netbook with 2 gigs of DDR2, a 320GB hard drive, a 14-in-1 multicard reader, SEVEN USB 2.0 ports and a $349 (MSRP) price tag THAT CAN ALSO BURN DUAL LAYER DVDs then you will have a valid point. Until then, there are some people who don't need mobility and NEED a computer that can do the whole optical drive thing. And they want it for less than $350.

[tiuk @ Oct 10th 2008 6:51PM]

Jesus, that'd be a huge dictionary. Looks more like a phonebook.

[Joseph @ Oct 10th 2008 6:56PM]

it's not webster. it's oxford.

[mormon @ Oct 10th 2008 7:17PM]

They should build an LCD into the speakers for an extra $50, and forgo the keyboard and mouse in favor of a writing pad for an extra $300. That would make it a respectable buy for my meat-indexing system and carcas database at my butcher shop.

[Nick Catalano @ Oct 10th 2008 7:45PM]

I need one that will hotwire cars for my grand-theft hobby... so maybe they can include a serial port or something? i would probably buy one if it had that

[Alberto @ Oct 10th 2008 7:20PM]

Mac MINI. That's all I have to say.