My 70-year-old wife, who bought a computer a couple of years ago with a quad-core CPU and an NVIDIA 8500 GT vidcard, mocks your ignorant ageist stereotypes.
Edited - not going to risk your machine by suggesting a different fan if I can’t be there to verify safe temps afterwards.
you don’t get the original media - there’s a burn-your-own-backup utility on the machine.
I guess that’s a risk one might be willing to take to get a genuine copy of windows 7 for half of retail price.
Will this bad boy accept a card to make it wireless?
There’s no risk involved - buying the OEM copy is common practice among those in the enthusiast communit. It’s Microsoft’s little thing to keep us from pirating it, since we’re more than capable of that.
Based on the following link and some other research, this computer will be great for someone that needs a machine to check email, play solitaire, do their Ebay business or play some low impact games. It is not going to play the hard core games that require serious processors and high end video cards. With 9 USB ports and a 5 in 1 card reader, it sounds like a great computer for some folks.
not to be a jerk, but… you’re wrong. I recently encountered the same situation - 2.8ghz P4 trying to push streaming video at 1920x1080. Did fine in non-fullscreen, but as soon as you go full screen the processor usage maxed out. 2.8ghz P4 just doesn’t have the horsepower to push streaming vid on a high res screen, even with a decent discrete video card. On the other hand, I did 1280x720 full screen on an old 2ghz Athlon 64 single core and it handled it (altho the processor usage was fairly high). not all megahertz are created equal, folks. The 1.8 ghz single core on this machine will be right on the line for smooth fullscreen video. (Although you can always swap it out if that’s a priority for you.)
(And yes, it was free of malware. I checked.)
Here’s an amazon link. 4 stars.
http://www.amazon.com/eMachines-EL1331-03-Desktop-Windows-Premium/dp/B002QPWA2S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1266044120&sr=8-1
hmm any idea how this processor compares to a sempron 3000+? (processor lingo these days gets confusing)
Might have to bite if there are still some around come night time(PM)
It will take a 1x PCI Express card, but I think this is a half-height case and the only card I found was full height.
You’re not being a jerk at all, I really appriciate you explaining the situation to me. At work we use mostly 1280x1024 screens - I didn’t think of higher resolutions. Also, I knew that a 3.0GHz P4 will do live HDTV transcoding, but I didn’t consider the difference between that and streaming.
Thanks =D
Exactly. More and more applications today require more resources, video processing power, and more RAM. Like many have said, buy it if you have small kids and you want them to get familiar with a computer without spending half the national debt.
However, if you’re interested in watching HD video (720p or full 1080p) or like using 3D graphics programs like Vue, 3DSMax, Cinema4D, or even Poser, then you will need to buy a beefier system or better yet, build your own PC. You don’t have to buy Intel processors; AMD Phenom II X3 and X4 processors are less expensive, have a lot or computing power and can give you more bang for the buck without having to buy water-cooling systems or extra fans (because of excess heat). That is unless you want to build a gaming PC.
I have this machine, only mine was $149 a couple months ago from Tigerdirect with Vista Basic.
To answer your question: No.
Just a tip, E Machines are notorious for being junk computers. They are made with cheap parts that are likely to fail within 2 years.
I bought an E Machine myself, but it didn’t even make it to the 1 year mark before the motherboard failed. (on a side note the HDD is still working fine)
I know right.
Mine works fine as wireless with USB dongle, yes.
Buy online and take 10% off that with BCB. Was 15% a couple of weeks ago.
No problem, if it really bothered me, I’d have a friend who’s a retired Microsoft programmer or either of my brothers replace it with something quieter. Maybe I will as a birthday gift to myself this year. It’s amazing how this inexpensive “junk” type computer has hung together, had so few problems, and worked like clockwork for nearly five years now. Maybe I got one that was made in the middle of the week. 
Can it play Hulu fullscreen? Seriously? I can play Hulu fullscreen on my P3 833 Mhz from 2000, while its running batches in the background; I think this will be fine.