Question : Problem: How bad are E-machines?

Hi all,

I have heard bad things about E-machine computers. Some appear to have non-standard PSUs and motherboards, some were terrible due to Cyrix CPUs and bad fans. I want to know if they all have problems or whether it is certain models. I want to know if to me the problems would be minor, or still as bad (i.e. do they shape up with a couple of decent BB fans and some tuning?) because I am thinking of getting one for the kids. Probably around a K6-2 400. Please don't post alternatives, the alternative is that I build one, just for the price I could perhaps save myself some trouble.

So are there good apples in the barrel?
Please if reporting problems be specific about which model it was.

Thanks,

Road Warrior

Answer : Problem: How bad are E-machines?

I am very familiar with the E-Tower 366 models (Celeron 366's), as I bought one to replace my office DX33 and two friends bought the same model at the same time.  Great price at the time-$499 less a $75 rebate(which took 3 1/2 months to arrive after about ten phone calls).  This was in the summer of 1999.

My machine's floppy died in four days; replaced the entire machine under Office Depot's return policy.  Two months later the motherboard went south on a Friday afternoon.  As I had until Monday morning to get it running again, their depot replacement warranty was of no help.  They informed me that there were no replacement parts OF ANY KIND in the US.  They ship all the defective machines back to Korea for repair, and simply shipped you a new machine.  No good for me.  I bought a new case and MB for about $140 and had it running by Sunday afternoon without loss of data.  Why a new case?  Their MB is proprietary and I couldn't find a MB locally to fit the case.  I later learned the PS was also proprietary at the time.

One of my co-buyers had his power supply die after about six weeks.  After much argument with their tech support, he was able to convince them to ship him a new machine without the HD, which he removed from his old machine before shipping the box back to e-machines, so that in twelve days he was back up and running with the replacement box without data loss.

The other friend's machine is still running fine after a year.

My advice is to build your own machine.  It may not be cheaper but you can pick and choose your components.  

BTW, the 4.3 GB HD on my machine is a Fujitsu with a 13 ms seek time--positivly snail-like by today's standards.

Hope this helps.