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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

eMachines

Much like I will be offended when I am getting screwed by a large corporation, I will also give credit where credit is due.

I have posted a few entries about eMachines, mostly pertaining to why it is that I continue to buy the machines when they are pretty obsolete right out of the box. Since I don't want to waste the time looking up old posts, I will sum it all up in a quick sentence: Buy a $300 eMachine, put in $300 worth of upgrades (video card, RAM, etc.) and you have a $1500 HP, Compaq or Dell. That is the type of math that I like (also it is much easier to find an eMachine that comes without a monitor, and the monitor alone is generally at least a third of a system price from other companies -on a low end system).

I have also had extremely good luck with eMachines over the years. My first was a 366 (466? I forget which) which I continued to upgrade well past the time when it was a viable system. I was able to get about six or seven years of use out of it, in computer years that puts it past a dinosaur, hell it has already become fossil fuel by that point. My next few computers purchases were all eMachines as well. I have just had really good luck with them.

So it was that in the middle of May I was thinking about upgrading to yet another computer. After pricing them on the major websites, I determined that it would again be far cheaper to buy a base eMachine and throw in some upgrades. I happened to see one for $280 and decided to go ahead and get it. Of course it only had 256mb of RAM, which really should be criminal on a machine that is running Windows XP, the OS alone requires more than that to function correctly. Of course it was only going to have 256mb long enough to fire it up the first time anyway so it wasn't of any great concern.

I started it up just long enough to get past the "welcome to Windows" crap, as well as downloading the latest Windows updates (and if you don't have your machine set to automatically update you are just asking for trouble; Windows is about as secure as a bank working on the honor system), and powered it down for some upgrades.

In went a shiny new 512mb ATI graphics card (pci-express) which would be the biggest upgrade from my current system (which is using a 128 mb card through a PCI slot). Threw in a gig of ram and powered the machine back up. I downloaded the latest Catalyst software for the video card, logged in to Guild Wars to download about a year of updates, and waited. Off and running in about a half an hour.

My wife was actually using the machine at the time (although she didn't know it) when, after about an hour of play, it started to experience some display issues. The minimap was not showing anything on it, while the rest of it appeared to be functioning normally. Until she got to the middle of a major mission when, of course, the PC just shuts down. No BSD, no warning, just all of a sudden the machine is turned off completely. My keen observational skills lead me to believe that something may be wrong with the system.

Now, the eMachine in question uses an onboard nVidia graphics accelerator (which I had disabled in BIOS prior to poweing it up with the ATI card) and PCI bridge. I briefly thought that it may somehow have something to do with it not running with the ATI card, although that didn't really make any sense. I know that they are rival companies and all, but the ATI card should be able to work in any system regardless of what other hardware happened to be in it.

Since I had not used the machine for any length or time before I installed the RAM and the video card though, I really had no way to know if it was the video card, RAM, or PC itself that was the problem. I started testing it in a kind of backwards way. I uninstalled all of the software associated with the video card, as well as the card itself, then powered it up again. I tried to play the game for a while in this configuration, and eventually got to a random system shutdown. So, not the video card. Next up to take out the new RAM and put back in the old. Do you know how long it takes to boot Windows XP with only 256mb of RAM? Jeebus it took forever (a little too long I suspect). I didn't even try to play the game with only 256mb of RAM and onboard video because, well, I don't think it would have even loaded it. So, just while mindlessly surfing the internet, system shutdown. No BSD, no warning, just powered right down.

Being the psychic that I am, I knew that the first thing the customer service representative was going to suggest was reinstalling the OS, so I decided to go ahead and try that prior to calling them. It would not reinstall the OS, but instead came up with an error about a corrupt fill in the Windows/system32 folder, which is never good news. Could I have already downloaded a virus? It took about four attempts to get the OS to actually reinstall, but reinstall it did. So, back to the internet. Back to a random shutdown. I was less than happy.

Now to contact customer support. I decided to use the online chat with a representative feature, for two reasons: 1)It would give me time to read what I was saying before actually saying it, as I was a bit ~~fucking pissed off~~ upset, and 2)The support reps are invariably in a foreign country, and I really can't usually understand the majority of what they are saying.

There was one thing that I wasn't planning to tell the rep, though, and that was that I had already removed the cover and upgraded the system (of course they would know it when they got the machine back, I just didn't want the rep to imply that I had somehow screwed the machine up while sticking a card into a slot). I didn't log the session with this guy, but I probably should have, because it was about the worst customer service I have had in a long time. I tried to be as precise as I could in the description of the problem; I gave the model number, the part number, the serial number, the problem with the system randomly powering itself down, and a detailed description of the errors that I received while trying to reinstall the OS (there were a total of four such errors, each one different). His first words (well after the "thank you for contacting support" B.S.) were "Why were you trying to reinstall the operating system?"

Since I am supposed to be giving some kudos to eMachines right now, I am not going to go into a lot of detail about this particular support session. It can basically be summed up with the following:

Me: There is something wrong with the system. It is randomly shutting down. I have tried to reinstall the OS and it has had errors during the installation. Once it did reinstall it continued to have problems with random power downs.

Rep: J00 juz need 2 reb007.

Me: It will not boot, in fact, even the system restore cd is failing to load.

Rep: Joo juz need 2 use teh systm re570re cd

Me: I have tried that, it will not work.

Rep: Joo suxor n00b,

It wasn't really that bad, but that is kind of how I felt about it. He was repeatedly asking me to try what I had already tried, despite the fact that I assured him I had already tried it. At one point he decided that the "solution" to the problem was that the system restore cd was bad, which would explain all of the system power downs how, exactly? Oh yeah, the spelling might be a bit exaggerated as well. Anyway, eventually he agreed to pick the machine up and get it looked at.

So, on their own dime, eMachines sent me a box to put the system into, along with a fedex pickup slip to send it back to them. Which I did a couple of weeks ago. Today I got curious about the status and decided to contact support again, this time, however, the person I was chatting with was quite friendly.

I had thought that the hard drive was most likely corrupt, as that would explain why the system wouldn't reinstall the OS. It turns out that I was wrong. It was actually the motherboard that was bad. The machine is currently awaiting a replacement.

So this low dollar machine happened to have a problem, and eMachines went ahead and picked it up, paid for the shipping both ways, and it is repairing free of charge, despite the fact that I had already taken the cover off of it. I don't know if the other companies have since changed their policies, but it used to be that removing the cover voided all warranties.

Besides, a lot of people say that they have had problems with eMachines, but if they are willing to repair it with zero out of pocket cost to you, what could the problem really be? Aside from the problem with the first customer service rep, which was likely due a lot more to my frustration than his actual support; I know that he had to suggest what I had already tried, that is part of what I am sure is a checklist that they have to go through before they have a system picked up.

I have been perfectly happey with every eMachine I have bought so far, and this one, while it was less than perfect out of the box, was fixed without cost to me. kudos to eMachines.

After writing this, it occurred to me that I might have accepted a non-disclosure agreement, but I checked with eMachines to make sure before I posted it. I wonder if they would have said it was fine if I had written a scathing review? Ah well, I spent the time to write it, so here it is.

posted by Donnie (aka Shadowtwin) # 1:51 PM

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ShadowTwin Home Site Links: Arthur Witles Who I am - Site info Music Lost to History Archive Horoscope Archive Original Poetry Pre-Blogger Archives Stuff I Made Vacation Photos My coming of age story. Programs I use for the site Email me Latest Humorous T-shirt Slogan: "You Wish!" This one has to be taken in context to be appreciated. The girl wearing this belly shirt was maybe 5'0" tall, with a muffin top going on, despite the fact that she was clearly in her third trimester of pregnancy. In addition she was wearing a thong that came up past her low-rise jeans and pushed her muffin top down over the edge to really emphasize the roll. I'm not in perfect shape so I don't expect that others should be, but when you are wearing that shirt, along with the rest of the outfit, you open yourself to scrutiny (and perhaps random looks of horror). It's fun to hate: The Soccer Moms who insist that they drive gas-guzzling SUV's for the safety of their children despite the fact that they are 6 times more likely to be in a rollover accident than any other vehicle. It's like beating your child unconscious with the butt of your gun so that he will remain on the floor, thus making him less likely to be hit by a random bullet coming through the front window. When Shadowtwin reigns supreme: There will be mandatory, passive birth control required to participate in any form of government assistance. If you can't afford to raise your child on your own we are here to help you, but we must first make sure that your reproductive organs are adequately contained. If you don't like that policy all you have to do is support your kids your damn self! Vote Shadowtwin! ~~Wildly inaccurate, yet shockingly precise, predictions based completely on happenstance and arbitrary universal fluctuations.~~ Your Horoscope: Sagitarius: 11/22-12/21 A typographical error in your Church's newsletter will lead to you performing sex acts on dozens of anonymous strangers in your pursuit of "oral highground." Capricorn: 12/22-1/19 The stars did recently tell your wife to "listen to her heart" regarding whether or not she should leave you. The stars did not intend for you to listen to her heart. But once you used that bonesaw on her sternum (not trusting the stethoscope which just responded with a cryptic thumping sound), we're pretty sure she made up her mind anyway. Aquarius: 1/20-2/18 The stars would like to apologize for stating in their last prophecy, "Be wary of the stranger you meet at beach this weekend. The stars aren't sure why, but they don't trust him." Through a cosmic hiccup, that information was supposed to be released this month. The August prophecy should have read, "A dark and handsome stranger will approach you on the beach, profess his love for you, and sweep you away for a jetset marriage. After which you will lead a long, happy, prosperous, healthy life as the Queen of a small island nation." We apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused. Pisces: 2/19-3/20 Your new stopwatch will allow you to time how long you can hold your breath underwater down to the thousandth of a second. Unfortunately, poor planning will mean that you are not able to actually share the information with anyone. Aries: 3/21-4/19 Your innovative new device for beauticians to use while giving pedicures can be wildly successful and make you quite wealthy IF you change the name. Trust us, no one is going to buy a "Ped-O-File". Taurus: 4/20-5/20 Your Mother always told you to wear clean underwear just in case there was an accident and paramadics had to see them. But as you board that plane today, the stars want you to know that you needn't worry about it. The debris field will be more than 8 square miles, making it impossible to find most human remains. Not to mention that the ensuing fire burned so hot that it disintegrated not only all fabric, but most of the thin metals aboard as well. Gemini: 5/21-6/21 You just had to get that genital piercing, didn't you? The stars tried to warn you not to, but you went ahead and did it anyway... Now all your worst fears will come to bear when, at a campground this weekend, you run afoul of this guy: Cancer: 6/22-7/22 The less traveled by areas of the Grand Canyon's north rim offer some of the most breathtaking views of this natural wonder. You will soon find out they also include some of the worst footings and none of the handrails. They do, however, provide equally awe-inspiring, terminal velocity impacts. Leo: 7/23-8/22 The stars heard your pleas, begging for someone who you could share your love with and embrace for the rest of your life. If you are still single, throw your arms around the closest person to you at 3:44pm GMT on Dcember 9th -That'll be the one. Trust us, you won't have time to be picky... Virgo: 8/23-9/22 The stars have piled up most of your things on the front porch. You can stay at a friend's house, but you aren't coming back home until you admit what you did and apologize. The stars' Mother was right about you... (you must have really pissed them off; the stars were in tears while they told me this) Libra: 9/23-10/22 The stars have been doing a little thinking and a lot of math. The population of planet earth is roughly 6,796,590,704. That means that roughly 566,382,558 people share each astrological sign. About 18,620,796 have the same birthday. Based on average life expectancy as many as 248,277 people were born on the same day, in the same year, for every zodiac sign. How can one statement possibly predict the future of all of them? Ehh, fuck it. "A full moon while Venus is rising is an omen of good things to come." Scorpio: 10/23-11/21 They say you never know how you are going to react to a crisis. After a home invasion this weekend you will: You will scream, "Do whatever you want to my wife, but leave me alone!" You will then create a distraction by throwing your newborn at the assailant as you dive through the window to safety. Now you know. Music lost to history: *Aerosmith - Dream On* When I started doing these, I could never have imagined that I would be putting an Aerosmith song here. Since I was born in 1974, this song is well before my generation. It was recorded in 1972 and released in 1983 on Aerosmith's Self-Titled Album, but to read the information on it at Wikipedia most of us would become familiar with it from a re-release in 1976. Like most of the music being released in the late 60's/early 70's that was pushing the rock-n-roll envelope, Dream On relies heavily on solid composition and and melody. Before the era of the modern effects processor, these bands had no distortion to hide behind (or very little), and synthesized instruments hadn't yet made their way into music. In that way the music always sounds more raw to us today because, quite simply, it was. While it seems laughable to think about today, music like this was so far removed from the bubble-gum pop of the 50's that it still wasn't accepted into the mainstream. As the baby-boomers became the target demographic, the rock-n-roll movement really started to pick up speed, with bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith clearing the path for the much darker and heavier bands like Black Sabbath. While I (and most of my generation) are probably far more familiar with the Aerosmith of the late 80's and early 90's, the reason this song makes it onto my MLtH page comes down to one thing: Age. Not necessarily the age of the song; In fact, as I sat down to do the research for this today, I had no idea when it was released, but would have guessed (closely) the mid 70's. Tyler was born March 26, 1948, meaning that this song was written when he was only 24 years old. I'm not sure why, but I have always thought this song was pretty amazing given his age at composition. I suppose it is human nature to wax poetic about the days of yore and the imminent passage of time, but the melody sets a mood that makes you feel it right along with him. As the song nears the end and his lyrics become more more frenzied, you can almost feel the pain (longing?) in his voice. Listen to it with headphones and no distraction sometime, you'll see what I mean. I wrote a short bit some time ago about Kelly Sweet's cover of this song (see the video on Youtube). While I have since gotten over the initial hatred I felt towards the cover of the song, I still just can't like it. The words are there; she hits the notes; but I just can't hear it in her voice. As if there is somthing very personal about the song and Tyler's deliverance of the lyrics that just can't be duplicated. At least to me. That said, I have heard Aerosmith doing the song with an orchestra, and it also seems to lack the passion of the original. So perhaps the thing that I like so much about it is the under-produced, raw sound of it, or it may be that I am still hearing it through the ears of that impressionable youth that heard if for the first time in a dusty old Van with my Uncle Art. Either way, it seems it is Lost to History. Music Lost to History Archive I Can't Believe it's Not Porn! WhorePresents.comYep, it's not porn. It's not a site with gifts for sale either, which is probably a good thing since I can't imagine that any woman would be at all flattered to get a gift -no matter how nice- in a box that says "Whore Presents.com" on it. Daily Reading: BlackChampagne Magazine Man Shane Nickerson Wil Wheaton Boners Hoyazo's Poker Blog My reading list changes from time to time, and there are many sites that I visit that are not on the list. They are listed in the order that I visit them, enjoy!
	Shadowtwin.com: eMachines Tuesday, June 06, 2006 eMachines Much like I will be offended when I am getting screwed by a large corporation, I will also give credit where credit is due. I have posted a few entries about eMachines, mostly pertaining to why it is that I continue to buy the machines when they are pretty obsolete right out of the box. Since I don't want to waste the time looking up old posts, I will sum it all up in a quick sentence: Buy a $300 eMachine, put in $300 worth of upgrades (video card, RAM, etc.) and you have a $1500 HP, Compaq or Dell. That is the type of math that I like (also it is much easier to find an eMachine that comes without a monitor, and the monitor alone is generally at least a third of a system price from other companies -on a low end system). I have also had extremely good luck with eMachines over the years. My first was a 366 (466? I forget which) which I continued to upgrade well past the time when it was a viable system. I was able to get about six or seven years of use out of it, in computer years that puts it past a dinosaur, hell it has already become fossil fuel by that point. My next few computers purchases were all eMachines as well. I have just had really good luck with them. So it was that in the middle of May I was thinking about upgrading to yet another computer. After pricing them on the major websites, I determined that it would again be far cheaper to buy a base eMachine and throw in some upgrades. I happened to see one for $280 and decided to go ahead and get it. Of course it only had 256mb of RAM, which really should be criminal on a machine that is running Windows XP, the OS alone requires more than that to function correctly. Of course it was only going to have 256mb long enough to fire it up the first time anyway so it wasn't of any great concern. I started it up just long enough to get past the "welcome to Windows" crap, as well as downloading the latest Windows updates (and if you don't have your machine set to automatically update you are just asking for trouble; Windows is about as secure as a bank working on the honor system), and powered it down for some upgrades. In went a shiny new 512mb ATI graphics card (pci-express) which would be the biggest upgrade from my current system (which is using a 128 mb card through a PCI slot). Threw in a gig of ram and powered the machine back up. I downloaded the latest Catalyst software for the video card, logged in to Guild Wars to download about a year of updates, and waited. Off and running in about a half an hour. My wife was actually using the machine at the time (although she didn't know it) when, after about an hour of play, it started to experience some display issues. The minimap was not showing anything on it, while the rest of it appeared to be functioning normally. Until she got to the middle of a major mission when, of course, the PC just shuts down. No BSD, no warning, just all of a sudden the machine is turned off completely. My keen observational skills lead me to believe that something may be wrong with the system. Now, the eMachine in question uses an onboard nVidia graphics accelerator (which I had disabled in BIOS prior to poweing it up with the ATI card) and PCI bridge. I briefly thought that it may somehow have something to do with it not running with the ATI card, although that didn't really make any sense. I know that they are rival companies and all, but the ATI card should be able to work in any system regardless of what other hardware happened to be in it. Since I had not used the machine for any length or time before I installed the RAM and the video card though, I really had no way to know if it was the video card, RAM, or PC itself that was the problem. I started testing it in a kind of backwards way. I uninstalled all of the software associated with the video card, as well as the card itself, then powered it up again. I tried to play the game for a while in this configuration, and eventually got to a random system shutdown. So, not the video card. Next up to take out the new RAM and put back in the old. Do you know how long it takes to boot Windows XP with only 256mb of RAM? Jeebus it took forever (a little too long I suspect). I didn't even try to play the game with only 256mb of RAM and onboard video because, well, I don't think it would have even loaded it. So, just while mindlessly surfing the internet, system shutdown. No BSD, no warning, just powered right down. Being the psychic that I am, I knew that the first thing the customer service representative was going to suggest was reinstalling the OS, so I decided to go ahead and try that prior to calling them. It would not reinstall the OS, but instead came up with an error about a corrupt fill in the Windows/system32 folder, which is never good news. Could I have already downloaded a virus? It took about four attempts to get the OS to actually reinstall, but reinstall it did. So, back to the internet. Back to a random shutdown. I was less than happy. Now to contact customer support. I decided to use the online chat with a representative feature, for two reasons: 1)It would give me time to read what I was saying before actually saying it, as I was a bit ~~fucking pissed off~~ upset, and 2)The support reps are invariably in a foreign country, and I really can't usually understand the majority of what they are saying. There was one thing that I wasn't planning to tell the rep, though, and that was that I had already removed the cover and upgraded the system (of course they would know it when they got the machine back, I just didn't want the rep to imply that I had somehow screwed the machine up while sticking a card into a slot). I didn't log the session with this guy, but I probably should have, because it was about the worst customer service I have had in a long time. I tried to be as precise as I could in the description of the problem; I gave the model number, the part number, the serial number, the problem with the system randomly powering itself down, and a detailed description of the errors that I received while trying to reinstall the OS (there were a total of four such errors, each one different). His first words (well after the "thank you for contacting support" B.S.) were "Why were you trying to reinstall the operating system?" Since I am supposed to be giving some kudos to eMachines right now, I am not going to go into a lot of detail about this particular support session. It can basically be summed up with the following: Me: There is something wrong with the system. It is randomly shutting down. I have tried to reinstall the OS and it has had errors during the installation. Once it did reinstall it continued to have problems with random power downs. Rep: J00 juz need 2 reb007. Me: It will not boot, in fact, even the system restore cd is failing to load. Rep: Joo juz need 2 use teh systm re570re cd Me: I have tried that, it will not work. Rep: Joo suxor n00b, It wasn't really that bad, but that is kind of how I felt about it. He was repeatedly asking me to try what I had already tried, despite the fact that I assured him I had already tried it. At one point he decided that the "solution" to the problem was that the system restore cd was bad, which would explain all of the system power downs how, exactly? Oh yeah, the spelling might be a bit exaggerated as well. Anyway, eventually he agreed to pick the machine up and get it looked at. So, on their own dime, eMachines sent me a box to put the system into, along with a fedex pickup slip to send it back to them. Which I did a couple of weeks ago. Today I got curious about the status and decided to contact support again, this time, however, the person I was chatting with was quite friendly. I had thought that the hard drive was most likely corrupt, as that would explain why the system wouldn't reinstall the OS. It turns out that I was wrong. It was actually the motherboard that was bad. The machine is currently awaiting a replacement. So this low dollar machine happened to have a problem, and eMachines went ahead and picked it up, paid for the shipping both ways, and it is repairing free of charge, despite the fact that I had already taken the cover off of it. I don't know if the other companies have since changed their policies, but it used to be that removing the cover voided all warranties. Besides, a lot of people say that they have had problems with eMachines, but if they are willing to repair it with zero out of pocket cost to you, what could the problem really be? Aside from the problem with the first customer service rep, which was likely due a lot more to my frustration than his actual support; I know that he had to suggest what I had already tried, that is part of what I am sure is a checklist that they have to go through before they have a system picked up. I have been perfectly happey with every eMachine I have bought so far, and this one, while it was less than perfect out of the box, was fixed without cost to me. kudos to eMachines. After writing this, it occurred to me that I might have accepted a non-disclosure agreement, but I checked with eMachines to make sure before I posted it. I wonder if they would have said it was fine if I had written a scathing review? Ah well, I spent the time to write it, so here it is. posted by Donnie (aka Shadowtwin) # 1:51 PM Comments: Post a Comment << Home Archives June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 October 2007 December 2007 February 2008 August 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 July 2009 August 2009 October 2009 November 2009 All site content is © Donnie Burgess 2006-2009 Site design was stolen directly from Blackchampagne.

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