eMachines Does Back-to-School Desktops

eMachines hopes to appeal to parents and students with three new budget-friendly desktop PCs and flat-panel displays.

eMachines has announced a set of three new desktop PCs designed to offer power and features to students at budget-friendly prices. The company has also reduced prices on its flat-panel and CRT-based displays.

“The new PCs provide the digital media, connectivity and performance capabilities that let families and students enjoy time online, play games and download photos and video of summer activities,” said Glenn Jystad, Gateway’s manager of consumer desktops, in a release. “In addition, the powerful performance will keep students well-equipped for research, studies and writing papers when school begins in just a few months.”

All three systems sport Nvidia GeForce 6150Se integrated graphics with 128 MB of shared video RAM, meaning they use main memory rather than dedicated RAM for the display, but they do offer DirectX9 support. The systems ship with 10 game demos and an hour of WildTangent online play, and support either 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound. Each system sports six USB ports, and ship with Microsoft Works and Google Desktop Search.

At the top of the line is eMachines’ T5230 desktop, sporting an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ processor at 2.3 GHz with 1 MB of L2 cache, 1 GB of memory (expandable to 2 GB), a 250 GB hard drive, a dual-layer DVD±R/RW drive, a 15-in-1 media reader, and Windows Vista Home Premium. After a $50 mail-in rebate, the system carries a price tag of just $449.99&mash;certainly cheaper than an iPhone.

Next up, the T5062 is much the same as the T5230, but uses a 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor with 512 MB of L2 cache and dials back to a 160 GB hard drive—but after rebate, it’s just $399.99. Rounding out the new systems, the T3616 offers a 2 GHz AMD Sempron 3600+ processor with 256K of L2 cache, 512 MB of RAM (expandable to 2 GB), a 120 GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Basic, but omits the media card reader. After rebate, the T3616 costs just $349.99.

eMachines has also lowered the prices on its LCd displays, bringing its 17-inh model down to $169.99 and its 19-inch model down to $199.99. The company also offers a 17-inch flat-screen CRT display for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.