Computer ramblings

Well, as many people may know, I have struggled with various computer issues for the past 6 or 7 months- probably since my major move where my previous monitor didn't quite survive the cross country trek? I've bounced from system to system, all being temporary fixes until in January when we were finally able to afford a new computer. Even that though was not without it's issues and hassles. We are an an extremely tight budget and just could not afford anything fancy or high tech. First, we purchased a new monitor- an acer 17" wide screen that was on sale at Walmart- it made a huge difference and did help our computer situation a little... There are three of us computer addicts in the house and we were literally down to one old patched together computer for a while, where the only thing we could do was browse the web... and barely do that at times!!

Ok, after the monitor, we started looking around for tower packages with the emphasis being on price. I was basically resigned to idea that I might not be able to play sims3... broke my heart, but I kept the thought that Hey, there's always my back up of sims2!! We finally found an E-machine, Yes Yes Yes I know what everyone thinks of E-machines!!! I did an intense amount of research though and it was the best buy economically and amazingly enough, technically?


We purchased an E-machine which included windows7, 4gb ram, 1.8 gh dual core processor, 580 gb of storage memory. While there were some features we had to compromise and give up, over all this computer was an excellent purchase!!  We paid $350 for it, got the keyboard and speakers as well in the package. And, best of all- It plays Sims3!!!!!! Granted not the fasted game play in the world but awesome for building or creating!  I reinstalled the sims2 to see how that would play, because with all the eps, stuff packs, and my cc addiction, it was running pretty dang slow on our other computers. No problem here! It is a little slow initially but then they all are with these games.

So over all, I have to say I give this machine at least a B! Be advised though, for $350 you are not going to get a lot of extra bells and whistles as far as software? The Microsoft office is only a trial version. I went ahead and downloaded the free version of Open Office which works just as well! You also don't get much for phot editing but there are so many free options out there that you should be able to find something to suit you needs?  The plus side is there is a huge amoung of free space on this computer so you can install other programs!!
http://www.emachines.com/