I bought this laptop purely out of the compelling nature of the Amazon Lightning Deal price of $279 plus the specifications of the unit (since then it seems they've made the deal price the standard one, for now). I own a computer service business, so I know exactly how to research laptops for potential purchase down to the component level, and here's why I decided to make the buy:* CPU: It might be a cheap Celeron, but it has a 1MB cache and 64-bit capability, and is based on the Core 2 processor; DEFINITELY far more powerful than any netbook, and in my tests it plays 720p high-definition H.264 video clips without a single hitch. The lower cache is also somewhat mitigated by the dual-channel DDR3 memory.
* RAM: 2GB of dual-channel DDR3. Enough said. It's the latest and greatest kind of memory, and there's enough to get most typical things done. You could even run Photoshop if you wanted, and it'd be fine.
* Hard drive: 160GB SATA...pretty small by today's standards, but it's way more than most people will use, including myself since I have a desktop for all the big stuff.
* DVD-RW drive: YES, IT BURNS DVDs. Very compelling, particularly since netbooks' main missing feature is an optical drive.
* 15.6" widescreen: you can easily buy a laptop for $300 more and get a smaller screen. The image is crisp and I absolutely can't complain. The resolution is really good, also. Plenty of video real estate to get things done.
* Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit: 64-bit! Not Starter Edition! Not Vista! What more could you ask for? (Also, Linux works great on it; I checked!)
* This thing isn't a 17" laptop, yet it has a numeric keypad! Not a full one, but just the fact that it has the standard 0-9 and Enter matrix in the proper place is amazing, and awfully handy for keeping those pesky financial records!
Some people will not like the lack of a webcam, but the most annoying compromise is the sound. While you can easily connect a set of speakers and get wonderful sound, the built-in speaker is mono (there is only one speaker), very quiet, and has a very poor response range. It's sufficient for hearing sounds such as a mail notification (if ambient noise in the room is low), but it's insufficient for almost everything else, including listening to music. Honestly, most people could care less about the missing cam and pitiful speaker, especially at this price point. It's powerful, it gets the job done and does so at great speed, and the feature list is absolutely shocking for a $279 unit. If I was evaluating this at its "normal" $399 price, I would advise coughing up an extra $100 and buying a dual-core unit with 4GB and a 320GB hard drive instead, but the $120 off makes this an absolutely unbeatable offer. In fact, I've already helped three other people purchase one since mine was delivered and I evaluated it first-hand.
If you get this at a good price, you absolutely won't be sorry. Just buy it!
Upon opening the monitor, I notice shelling is made of a thin, flat black plastic. A little on the cheap side, but this laptop is not meant to go off-road. Acceptable. The monitor is wide and very crisp. I was very disappointed in the video card. Granted, it is an integrated 4500M, but the resolution display cannot go any higher than 1366x768. I like my icons and screen to appear smaller, so I can essentially fit more onto my screen. The keys are well spaced and firm to the touch, so there is no accidental key-pressing. There is also an integrated accounting key-pad on the right, something my previous Compaq M2100 did not have, a plus for accounting/econ majors. The power cord seems pretty sturdy. Unlike my previous Compaq which was victim of a weak neck, the power cord is a 90 degree plug and reinforced with thicker amounts of synthetic plastic/rubber. Finally, the laptop weighs in at 5.65 pounds.
This laptop will be used for basic everyday use: Internet Browsing, Mail, Social networking, remote networking into work, MS Office and Videos/Music. I do not plan on using any photo or movie editing programs. I was able to browse the internet a bit. I checked my mail and social networks. The laptop seems efficient, but when I attempted to run two tabbed windows (Car Forum and Ytube) at once, one of the windows (YTube) crashed! Luckily, it was quickly recovered Windows. Not a big deal for people with patience, but I always run multiple tabs so this might be a problem in the future.
The laptop comes with Windows 7 64-bit, a plus. It also comes with a 60 day trial of Microsoft office and Norton antivirus.
Overall, I really like the laptop. It lacks power in the dated Celeron processor but makes up for in a strong wireless 802.11b/g/n card, a nice sleek monitor and 160GB available hard drive for storing movies, music and pictures.
For $279 (Amazon Lightning Deal), I am very satisfied with my purchase!
*EDIT*
I was able to fool around with the new laptop some more last night. In total, I used the laptop for about 1.5 hours, MAX. The first 60 minutes comprised of basic internet browsing: Fbook, Amazon.com, and YouTube. Since I did not have available Wi-Fi, I tethered my HTC Snap. Sadly, because I was in the hills of Hollywood, I got very poor reception so my internet was sluggish. I skipped the YTube and stayed on Meebo for some chat.
My next laptop session was later that night at my apartment. I picked up the apartment's Wi-Fi quickly and web pages loaded normally, but nothing phenomenal. The wireless card works well, as expected.
As an avid music junkie, I noticed the Mono-speaker is VERY under powered. I opened Pandora while I was cooking in the kitchen. The noise from the overhead oven vent clashed with the weaker speaker from the laptop. The speakers in my old Compaq M2100 were much stronger. Granted, they were stereo. However, if you have a pair of headphones, watching movies on a plane, car ride or late at night easily solves this problem.
After I shut down, my battery life read 57%. Not bad for about 1.5 hours of web browsing and music streaming while using a mixture of Tether/Wi-Fi. Let me also add, whenever I am not plugged into AC power, I set my screen brightness to the lowest to conserve the laptop's power.
Again, I STILL believe this is a GREAT laptop for the price.
Buy eMachines eME527-2537 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Now
This looks like an Acer Aspire AS5734Z-4512 NoteBook except it comes with a single core processor (Acer owns Gateway and eMachines).I am expecting accessories to be well supported and compatible between both brands.
At $279, this laptop is an excellent deal. Ordered on Wednesday, delivered before noon on Thursday.
The laptop is lightweight (lighter than my 13" Apple MacBook) and responsive (DVDs play seamlessly).
It just takes a couple of minutes to configure it. I was able to connect my WPA2 Wireless N network with no issue.
The power adapter accepts up to 240V and the power cord is detachable this should be usable in Europe.
A webcam would have been a nice addition.
Pros:
Large and bright screen
Full keyboard with keypad
Windows 7 license
Minimal bloatware
Intel processor and video chipset
Reasonably fast and responsive
Up and running in two minutes
Reads DVDs out of the box
Battery comes half charged
Cons:
Single core processor
No webcam
Low powered speaker
Keypad skews keyboard to the right
Read Best Reviews of eMachines eME527-2537 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Here
For the past two weeks or so, I had been on the prowl for the cheapest laptop or net book I could find, as I needed something portable to use with a module on my motorcycle. Constantly lugging the desktop outside simply wouldn't do.I happened across this machine during a lightening deal (which seems to sporadically going in and out of effect for the past two to three days). For the price, this is an extremely capable machine, understandably with no extras to keep the price as low as it is.
Pros:
Minimal software is included, but free options (Open Office, GIMP, VLC, iTunes) all run very decently.
DVD playback is adequate, although there is some hiccuping as the drive "spools" up initially, but is fine after a few seconds.
The wireless card works better then I would have expected, and has about the same range as my MacBook Pro.
I couldn't easily locate it before purchase, but the screen resolution is 1366 x 768.
Minimal pre-installed bloatware.
Plays Solitaire fine, I wouldn't trust it for anything more intensive than that though.
I was spoiled my Apples' trackpad included with their newest MacBook Pro, but the trackpad on here works quite nicely. While not being multi-touch capable, the included drivers / utilities allow you to set up sections to use as scrolling (for webpages), simulate momentum scrolling, and have hot-sections for gestures / commands.
Cons:
The lid does feel a little flimsy, but under normal use doesn't seem like it should be problematic.
Very cheap, mono-speaker. If you're going to watch movies or play music, make sure you have some headphones.
If all you need as a bare-bones laptop, this machine is perfect. Just about the same price as (if not cheaper than) a good number of netbooks, which gives you an optical drive, at the trade-off of battery life. A little shy of an hour and a half of web browsing forums with brightness at minimum took the battery from full charge to about 45%. I haven't tweaked the power saving options, could probably salvage a little more juice out of it.
Want eMachines eME527-2537 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Discount?
You get what you pay for but once in a while a great value floats to the surface and this eMachine proves it. Sure the audio is pretty bad and as noted by other reviewers the little jewel hardly features leading edge performance but if you can hook one for less than $300 its a steal for rudimentary applications...email, surfing the net, amazon-shopping. Excellent wireless performance and good battery life. I still hate MicroSoft but Windows-7 doesn't suck too bad so the whole purchase has been positive. Strongly recommended.
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