eMachines Offers New Budget Mini-Towers and Display

eMachines has introduced a new line of white mini-tower PCs and a matching monitor, giving customers on a budget something to choose besides boring and grey.

Budget PC maker eMachines—along with Gateway, now a subsidiary of Acer—has rolled out three new consumer-oriented mini-tower PCs with “luminous” white cases and a matching flatscreen display, hoping to appeal to both home and business PC users on a budget as well as the burgeoning back-to-school crowd…or even high-end users just looking for a straight-up affordable PC to plop in kitchen or spare room.

“Consumers on a budget looking for a solid performing PC will find some great choices in the new eMachines line-up,” said eMachines’ senior manager for desktops Glenn Jystad, in a statement. “Our new mini-towers provide the horsepower and technology needed for today’s applications at a very reasonable price, and are stylish and compact as well.”

First up, the new eMachines E182H flat-panel LCD display measures 18.5 inches and sports a 1,366 by 768-pixel native resolution; it also boasts a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 cd/m&exp2; of brightness, and a 5 ms response time…but the only input is VGA. The E182H is designed to complement the three new mini-tower PCs, and is available for $129.99.

The ET1300-02 sports an AMD Athlon X2 4850e Dual-Core Processor running at 2.5 GHz and Nvidia GeForce G100 graphics with 512 MB of dedicated video memory. The system also sports 3 GB of RAM 160 GB of hard drive storage, an 18× DVD±RW Super-Multi DVD drive, video output (VGA, DVI, and HDMI), and a multi-format digital media card reader, and six USB ports. With the E182H display, the ET1300-02 is available for $449.99.

Next up, the eMachines ET1810-03 moves back to the Intel camp, with a 2.2 GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor, Nvidia GeForce 7050 graphics, 3 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and an 18× DVD±RW Super-Multi DVD drive. The system sports a digital media card reader and six USB 2.0 ports; unfortunately, for video output customers will be stuck with VGA. The ET1810-03 comes with a $369.99 suggested price. The ET1810-01 desktop is a similar configuration, but steps down to a 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron processor, a 160 GB hard drive, and 2 GB of RAM for $299.99.

All the new mini-towers ship with matching keyboard and mouse; the ET1300-02 ships with matching speakers. The ET1300-02 and ET-1810-03 ship with Windows Vista Home Premium; the ET1810-01 ships with with Windows Home Basic.