mac and avoid all the virus and MS crap

I can't because of othere issues

E machines at Best buy

AAAACKKKK !! (Makes sign of cross) NOOO NOOOOO not E-Machines. Find a reputable local dealer who does his own assembly.

I'M BACK!!!

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a PC is only as good as the warranty!!

What's wrong with emachines? Just curious.

Find deals on the Dell outlet page. You will get quality at a fair price. I would not buy the ones you are looking at.

I really like the the Dells. Call'em up and they can tell you what you need.

How old are your kids?

I've gone the E machine route twice with my kids. Don't go there. I just got them some Dells and they are doing well.

E Machines...bad news. My mother bought one over the summer, and a week later the Hard Drive crapped out. It took over 2 months for the repaired computer to be sent back to her.

I am thinking that 512K and 120MB would do it.

I have a great little unit, state of the art, with 512K RAM for ya.

Even comes with two 360K floppies!

$600, and it's yours. <|:)~

E-machines may not be your best bet. Check your yellow pages for custom computer builders. For less than a store brand you may be able to get more computer. Definitely go with the Athalon --1.8 GHz or better. 512 MB of RAM, but be sure its DDR-RAM. You should also have a separate video card--with at least 16MB of video RAM. On board sound is OK. Be sure your mother board has a LAN connection--for eventual broadband ISP and I would get extra USB connections on the front of the case for connecting digital cameras, PDA's, MP3 players etc.

Basically any "one up from the bottom" machine from Dell is good. But you should buy the monitor separately. Go to Best Buy and look at them. Monitors are something that you have to eyeball, because the color and clarity vary even if all the "factors" are identical.

The MAIN thing to be aware of is to load up on memory. Since these are educational machines the CPU speed, hard drive size and speed, and all the ports and everything else are absolutely fine on a "second from the bottom of the line" type machine. Just add additional memory. Memory makes the biggest performance impact on non-gaming machines because the more memory, the less "swapping" the operating system does to and from disk.

The other thing about Dell is they normally have a "deal" every week for free memory upgrades, free or reduced cost printers, or other stuff. The quality inside the box is excellent. They are not the cheapest, but you open the inside of their boxes and compare -- they use metal where others use plastic, their heat sinks are oversized, the wiring is nicely tabbed down, etc.

Don't knock a product without substantiation.

Here's a synopsis of e-machines from a typical newsgroup post:

It is _fact_ that Emachines uses entirely proprietary motherboards and power supplies. I've seen both. The powersupplies are significantly smaller than any other PC powersupply I've ever seen, and they burn out. The motherboard cannot be replaced with anything (even in Emachines towers where you'd think maybe you could). We're talking 'disposable computer' here, it's the opposite of what the PC is theoretically capable of. The eOne in particular is everything people warned against in the iMac, only this time the inability to fix the machine or get parts is beyond inexcusable.

I build and fix computers and I wont TOUCH an e-machine.

Do they still make computers with only 120 mb drives?

Make sure to check the Dell website: the refurbished page.
They also offer free shipping and some warranty.

See my #17, Doc