When my friend first told me that he bought a new computer, I was happy! Finally he would stop calling me every day going back to the old one. At least that’s what I thought before eMachine told me it had been acquired! I don’t mean to put eMachines down, but I’ve never been too impressed. For me, there have always been “disposable PCs”. I know Gateway is their parent company, and Gateway has some top line computers. But eMachines was never one of them. For now……
When I started checking the new eMachine, I started to realize that maybe they finally came out with a PC that is equal to the Aspire M5100, Gateway GT5662, HP Pavilion a6400z and Inspiron 530. I mean, this eMachine does even better than the others in many ways and it costs 20% less , while they do it!
eMachines T5254 comes loaded with Vista Home Premium operating system. It’s a problem for me, but that’s only because it’s on XP Professional! If you’ve ever tried Vista, you’ll probably love it. The T5254 is equipped with a dual-core 2.1-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, which provides decent speed for daily use and plenty of system memory, with a 2 GB RAM stick. If you don’t think the ram is enough, it has an extra hole so you can always add another piece of wood.
The T5254 will take care of most of any day-to-day tasks from internet surfing, downloading, burning DVDs, etc. It comes with a double layer DVD+/-RW, a large 320 GB hard drive for storage, a media card reader and 6 USB slots .
Now, on the negative side, the eMachines T5254 does not include features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or a FireWire port. In my opinion, the biggest flaw with the T5254 in the nVidia GeForce 6150 SE video card is its build. It doesn’t support DX10 or 3D graphics, but you can always install an upgrade to add a little game play.
eMachines T5254 offers room for upgrades. You can add a 3D graphics card or add an extra SATA port that allows you to add a secondary hard drive. There are two standard PCI slots, an extra RAM slot and an expansion slot for a second drive.
The T5254 is packed with 30-90 day trial programs like Napster, AOL and Norton Internet Security. These extra programs can slow your PC down, but you can remove them if you want. The folder comes with more icons than you might like to see, but these can also be deleted.
Overall, I would say this is a really great desktop computer for the cheap price of $400. It’s a well-rounded PC that would make a really nice second computer for just about anyone or a great starter PC!
