So I am thinking of buying this e-machine computer. The only problem is that even with a new videocard and 1024MB of RAM, my friend thinks that my computer will run slow trying to play half-life 2! Is this true? He says that e-machines are crappy no matter what you put in them. Is this true?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=emachine+problems&spell=1

Looks like the big thing is it's hard to upgrade an E-Machine.
Myself, I just bought an E-Machine Computer this weekend with 512MB RAM. I'll go put HL2 on it in a sec, and tell you how it runs. If it'll run on my machine, then it should run on yours too.

I use e-Machines. I like it.

Well, I tried it out, and it runs fine on my E-Machine.
I didn't try it on a high graphical setting or anything though; I play most games with low graphics to reduce lag.

I don't know much about e-machines but when i have a problem i just upgrade my specs and then my worries are over.

Whats an e-machine? :/

What's an e-machine?

from what i've read, a nice cpu.
So you guys think it can have more than a few (big) programs on it and it'll run fine? I want to put on the following: iTunes, Half-Life 2, Mozilla firefox, Flash mx, And Pinnacle studio 9. Will it run okay?

IF YOU HAVE ANY HORROR STORIES OF THE E-MACHINE, PLEASE SHARE THEM.

You should just build it yourself it's not that hard i built my own by hardly reading any manuals, if your wanting lots of programmes or have lots of programmes running at the same time you need ram thats memory for your applications if you want memory for your your **** like mp3's video etc get a good hard drive. I have 2 hard drives which hold around 150 gigs and 1 zip and pen drive drive with lots of disks which means i have about 5 gigs which i can take portable. I also have an X600 ati radeon graphics card which i love like a child it's the daddy when gaming the graphics whooaaa, and i have about a gig of ram which lets me do lots of stuff at the same time, i have lots more stuff for my computer i could go on for about an hr telling you so i won't.

But like i said don't get an e-machine just get the standard stuff with a computer like case correct wires, enough universal serial bus ports and stuff, but make sure you get a very modern and cool motherboard, cause what are you gonna do with all your cool stuff if you have know where to connect it. Make sure you have a precise list before you go asking and buying there parts cause those salesmen are always trying to con people by getting rid of there old dated stuff don't be fooled. And if you have any problems later installing all this **** you can give me a pm and i'll send you some good stuff to help you on your way to owning a cosmic personal computer.

p.s Memory is dirt cheap to buy now so there hasn't been a better time

I dont want to spend more than like $500 though. And remember that this is for my birthday. Not christmas, a couple of birthdays, and another christmas. My parents are too cheap to buy me all those parts.
oh, and also, I'm not planning on having more than the following applications: Flash mx, Half-Life 2, iTunes, Mozilla firefox, and Pinnacle studio 9. I'm not going to run them all at once either.

i've heard mixed reviews about e-machines, most professsionals advise against it
it's a typical budget pc

just make sure you have a good graphics card for half life 2 and you can NEVER have enough RAM.....especially for video editing

I dont want to spend more than like $500 though. And remember that this is for my birthday. Not christmas, a couple of birthdays, and another christmas. My parents are too cheap to buy me all those parts.
oh, and also, I'm not planning on having more than the following applications: Flash mx, Half-Life 2, iTunes, Mozilla firefox, and Pinnacle studio 9. I'm not going to run them all at once either.


Well why don't you try Dell dot com (www.dell.com) they would be better than any e-machine i use them all the time in college and they can be pretty powerfull, cause i mainly use powerful porgrammes in college like 3ds max,director,flash etc and real cheap, and you could probably have your own custom built pc for $500.00. Check the link i gave you and they have a thing on there website where you can choose what you want for a reallly low price but you can't get them in the shops so you might have not heard of them.

I have a customised Dell XPS it cost me $3,000.00 Not exactly, but it came just over 3k. This PC is awesome, It wont realy need upgrading for another 10 years. I run like 2 Lineage 2 clients on it both with high graphics windows media, msn maybe one or two other probrams and a net site all at once and it still runs smoothly. I could probably do more but there's no point.

i wouldn't say 10 yrs what ya gonna do when ATI announce there new graphics card in the year 2015 when theres halo 5 out and hl4 you still gonna be playing hl2 and halo 2, while of course worrying that computers can now fly from one house to another and you don't have enough motherboard space for your ram cause dreamweaver professional 2015 needs more ram.