Folks,
Low end PC's with Cyrix and Intel CPU's:
enjoy:
Posted at 10:34 a.m. PST Sunday, December 13, 1998
$399 PC is technological and marketing triumph
BY MIKE LANGBERG
Mercury News Computing Editor
When does a new electronic gadget become truly affordable for the mass market?
Perhaps the most common dividing line is $500. When videocassette recorders dipped under $500 in the early 1980s, sales soared. Big-screen television sets at 27 and 32 inches similarly took off in the mid-1990s when some models edged under that $500 mark.
Now, we'll see if the same holds true for personal computers.
A start-up company in Fremont called Emachines Inc. has pulled off a technological and marketing triumph: a fully functional Windows 98 PC with monitor for $499.
I've been testing this package -- a $399 eTower 266 computer with a $99 Emachines 14-inch monitor -- and I can report there's almost nothing not to like.
Indeed, the biggest problem may be finding one -- the first units arrived in stores on the weekend before Thanksgiving and in many cases were gone within a few days.
The eTower 266, of course, doesn't deliver all the power or speed associated with a top-of-the-line $2,000 PC. But for what I call low impact computing -- word-processing, World Wide Web surfing and simple home productivity chores such as personal finance programs -- the difference between the eTower and a screamer machine is negligible.
Retailers carrying the eTower 266 and the eTower 300, a slightly more advanced model for $499, include Best Buy, Costco, Fry's Electronics, Micro Center and Office Depot.
For more information, call Emachines toll-free at (877) 566-3463 or go to the company's Web site (www.e4me.com).
Here's what you get for $399: a Cyrix MII 266 MMX processor, 32 megabytes (MB) of random-access memory (RAM), a 2.1-gigabyte (GB) hard drive, a 24X CD-ROM drive, a 56 kilobits-per-second (K) V.90 modem and an ATI video card with 4 MB of video RAM.
Everything else you'd expect in a PC is included: a floppy-disk drive, a keyboard and mouse, external speakers, the full Windows 98 operating system, a copy of the Microsoft Works program for word processing and other productivity tasks, two free slots for adding circuit cards and the usual sockets, including two of the new Universal Serial Bus (USB) connectors.
The $499 eTower 300 is identical except for two upgrades: an Intel Celeron 300 processor and a 3.2-GB hard drive.
A few other $399 PCs are available today, although to the best of my knowledge none equal the eTower's specifications. The two eTower models may be hard to find because Emachines is only shipping about 100,000 of each before year-end.
Emachines, by the way, is a kind of virtual corporation. It was formed earlier this year by two Korean firms -- TriGem Computer, which makes PCs, and Korea Data Systems, which makes monitors -- specifically to offer low-cost computers in the United States. A small staff in Fremont coordinates manufacturing efforts by the two partners, as well as distribution and marketing.
Next year, Emachines is planning additional models -- none priced above $599 -- aimed at the consumer market. The company is also rolling out its line of monitors; the $99 14-inch model is available now, soon to be followed by a 15-inch model at $149 and a 17-inch model at $239.
Several days of tests
I spent several days performing a full range of home computing tasks on the eTower 266 -- surfing the Web through my local Internet service provider and America Online, reading my electronic mail with Eudora Pro, editing a photograph with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, playing an adventure game from LucasArts called Grim Fandango and writing this column with Microsoft Works.
I found only two significant differences from doing the same tasks on a high-end PC.
First, the eTower ships with two tiny stereo speakers that deliver very low fidelity. Anyone who cares about the quality of voice and music coming out of a PC would want to buy a set of decent external speakers, an investment that wouldn't have to exceed $100.
Second, the eTower was slightly slower in moving from one thing to another -- such as changing scenes in Grim Fandango -- than pricier systems with faster processors and more RAM. But I didn't consider the delays much of an inconvenience.
The monitor was clear and sharp, although I generally find 14-inch screens inadequate for today's graphics-intensive software and Web sites. I don't recommend buying anything less than a 15-inch monitor, which provides 20 percent more display space in square inches.
One caveat
One word of caution: Because Emachines is a new company, I can't vouch for the inherent quality of their PCs or the responsiveness of their customer service operation. However, I didn't find any manufacturing flaws in my unit, and the company tells me they've hired an established outside firm to provide tech support by phone.
If you buy an eTower, as with any new PC, I'd recommend using it as much as possible in the first few weeks. PCs almost always demonstrate hardware problems early in their life, and most retailers will accept returns with no questions asked within 30 days of purchase.
With that caveat in mind, what amazed me most about the eTower is the breakneck progress in low-cost computing.
Use them and lose them
Back in February, I wrote about one of the first $499 PCs, the PowerSpec 1880 from Micro Center. That model, no longer on the market, offered a Cyrix 180 Media GX processor, making the eTower 266 about 50 percent faster; 16 MB of RAM; a 1.6-GB hard disk; a 12X CD-ROM drive; and a 33.6 K modem. There were no USB ports or, at that price, a monitor.
In reviewing the PowerSpec, I advanced the idea of disposable PCs. Instead of fighting obsolescence by getting the most expensive computer on the market, I suggested some users could go in the opposite direction. That notion becomes even more appealing with the eTower.
Here's how it works: Buy a high-end PC today for about $2,000, you'll get a 450 megahertz Pentium II processor with 128 MB of RAM, a 12-GB or bigger hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive and a few other bells and whistles. But even this state-of-the art box will be hopelessly obsolete in four years, and you'll be looking for another machine.
Or you could buy a new $399 PC every year. You'll spend just $1,600 over four years. And the $399 PC you buy in three or four years is almost guaranteed to be more powerful than the $2,000 system you'd get in December 1998.
Let me quickly add this isn't a strategy for everyone.
Some home PC users might want to run demanding applications -- video editing, speech recognition and fancy simulation games come to mind -- that perform much better on mid- to high-end systems. And some users might want to install so many different programs, or download so much material from the Web, that they'll need more than 2 or 3 gigabytes in their hard disk.
In other words, the eTower isn't for me. I'm just the kind of computer geek who wants to be first on the block to sort through e-mail by voice commands or create documentaries from old camcorder footage.
But I'm seriously considering an eTower for my wife, Debbie. She's a self-employed professional who does only four things on her home-office PC: write reports with Microsoft Word, check e-mail through America Online, prepare bills for clients with Intuit QuickBooks and synchronize her Palm Pilot organizer. None of these tasks, as best I can tell, would go significantly faster or better on anything more expensive than a $399 PC.
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Write Mike Langberg at 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190; call (408) 920-5084; fax (408) 920-5917; or e-mail to mike@langberg.com .
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