Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 nice system, but......... August 27, 2010
me
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Pretty good piece of hardware but loaded with bloatware.
One really big shortcoming. You cannot change the hardware configuration at all.
Comes with 2GB memory but the spec says it supports 4GB, so what happens when you try to add memory???
First you try to find instructions to remove cover and there are none.
Then you call tech support and they tell you, "it is not recommended", after that the try to sell sell you some software service plan.
Then you attempt to "remove" the cover on your own. Big mistake. These are not intended to be "serviced"
I destroyed the package and there is no way to get the individual parts. btw they way the mem is ddr3 but the Amazon page suggests the many who bought ER 1402-05 also bought 2GB of DD2 memory..???
Summary. nice system but don't think it is a "normal" package that can be upgraded or repaired.
I have since ordered a Jetway with the Intel D525 and ION_2 that I know can be configured because it is a barebones.
 Great System With a Few tweaks August 23, 2010
Dr. Lorne Lavine
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this machine based on the reviews here and overall, I have been very pleased. A few key things that went into my rating:
1. Like many others, the first thing I did was to remove all the crapware that came preinstalled. That took about an hour but it wasn't too bad.
2. I updated all of my drivers, especially the nVidia and Realtek audio drivers.
3. I went into the BIOS and upped the video RAM from 256 to 512 MB. Yes, I'm aware that only leaving 1.5 GB of RAM for Windows 7 64-bit is barely enough, but since I only use this computer for playing HD content on my TV, it seemed like a good trade-off.
4. I installed Media Player Classic ([...]/).
5. I connected the machine directly to my tuner through HDMI.
6. While I'm sure the wireless works for some people, I've never even dreamed of trying to play 1080p .mkv files over wireless. I connected the system through Cat 5e to a gigabit switch.
7. I installed the Shark007 Codec pack.
The performance was more than I could have hoped for. 1080p content played flawlessly with no skipped frames that I could see and smooth video. Even with the reduced amount of available RAM, I found web surfing to more more than adequate. Netflix was running at full 3800 kbps for their HD titles and looks great.
One caveat in all of this: During the first few weeks of owning this, I installed VLC Media Player, swapped out my Avira antivirus with AVG, and had left auto-updates in Windows turned on. Something in this mix did a number on my system. I couldn't get a single 1080p file to play without major skipping and it looked more like a slide show than a video. Tried it on VLC, Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, Media Center...same problems in the exact same spots. Tried uninstalling AVG, no luck. Deleted VLC, no improvement. The only thing that worked was a system restore to a week earlier, and I turned off the Automatic Updates. Obviously, this isn't recommended, but it will suffice for now.
Maximum PC just gave it a rating of 4/10 but I would put it closer to 8/10, as long as you make the necessary tweaks.
 A neat home computer August 21, 2010
Margaret Ford
I had to return as several needed things on my old computer were apparently not compatible with Windows 7. At least that is what the local repair shop told me. Therefore, I could use them but as soon as the machine set a restore point, they disappeared. I felt bad as the machine is very nice for a home computer and was very good looking and easy to set up. Amazon offers such a wide variety of machines.
Perfect PC for Enterntainment Purposes* August 13, 2010
Vaibhav Patel
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a perfect little computer hookup to a TV to watch netflix/hulu/youtube. It has built in wireless and HDMI output. This gets rid of lot of wires that would need otherwise to hook up a computer to a TV. It comes with minimum bloatware. Its pretty quiet and requires very less space. Its a no brainer for people who needs a cheap media center PC.
The rest of the review is specially for those who are interested in the details of how this computer is best for media center.
I needed a PC to do following things.
1). Watch videos off of my network drive - WD world book.
2). Stream HD channels from my HDHomeRun box.
3). Record shows in HD to my network drive.
4). Download movies/videos off of internet in the background to my network drive.
5). Stream my Video library on the home network so that I can watch it on Xbox in other room.
I wanted a computer to do all of the above and my budget was $300. I also didnt want to wire my whole house in order to achieve this.
Not all of the above worked out of the box. I had to fine tune this bad boy to get the full juice out of it. Remember this computer has a single core and 2GB RAM to work with. However, NVIDIA 9200 comes in handy to do lot of video handling especially HD.
Tweaks in the order I did.
1). Get rid of bloatware including office works and other software trials.
2). Removed Norton Internet Security and installed the Norton Antivirus that Comcast gives away for free.
3). Disabled - Norton back up service, Identity protection service. These services eat lot of RAM and I can live without these protections. Also I wasn't gonna do anything related to money on this computer. So, do not care about these stuff.
4). Disabled Win 7 Aero Graphics by changing the theme to Windows classic. I dont need fancy animations for this computer to open a window.
5). Disabled lot of windows components such as Tablet services, assistance services - You can disable these things by going to ->Add Remove programs -> add remove windows components.
6). Install CopSSH, so that I can dial into this computer while I am away.
7). I had to upgrade all the drivers - sound, chipset, display from the emachines website because I had issues streaming HD content through Media Center. After that everything worked fine. I found that NVIDIA has a newer display driver on its website. Hence, I upgraded that too. After upgrading the display driver, the choppiness of video on went away.
8). With above tweaks, the PC uses little over 700MB after boot up. So I have about 1GB of Ram for actual media center activities. Around 256MB is unusable because its shared by NVIDIA.
After all these tweaks, I setup my Windows media center with my network drive and HDHomeRun. So now, I have a fully functional media center which allows me to watch movies/videos off of my Network drive and also watch/record local HD channels. I use bit torrent to download videos. I can also manage these downloads remotely by dialing into this computer through copssh. Everything for under $300. Couldn't ask for anything more.
love it August 12, 2010
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great PC. I would recommend it if you need an inexepensive PC for either your TV or for everyday use
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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