Even after Gateway purchased eMachines and improved the reputation of these home desktop computers from bargain-basement systems to computers with some quality control, eMachine PCs are still seen as low-cost, run-the-basic-applications-but-not-much-more computers. Well, that opinion might need reevaluated after looking at the company's new T6400 series.

With the first system in the line, the T6420, eMachines has put together a fairly impressive system that still sells for around $550 (albeit sans monitor). At the center of the T6420 home desktop computer lies an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor running at 2.20GHz. This 64-bit processor supports next generation operating systems and applications. eMachines pair it with a hefty 1GB of 400MHz DDR memory, a good amount for running graphics and video editing programs. If you need more memory in the future, the T6420 can house up to 4GB of RAM.

The company has played up the NVIIDIA graphics inside this latest series of desktop computers for home users. While true, the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPU on board the T6400 is literally on the board of the T6400. These integrated graphics share up to 128MB of video memory with the main system RAM and won't give you the pure graphics performance of a dedicated video card. But they're still better than a lot of integrated graphics options you'll find in a home desktop computer, and the motherboard does offer a PCI-Express slot for an upgrade to a top-of-the-line graphics board later on.

Storage space is ample with a 200GB 7,200rpm hard drive inside the system. This will give you a good amount of space for game installs, multimedia file storage, and all around elbow room.

There's a 16X DVD+/-RW double layer drive that burns to traditional CD-R and DVD-R media, letting you create audio CDs and video DVDs. It can also handle the higher capacity double-layer media, with capacities of 8.5GB of data (or four hours of movie) on a single disk.

With the processor, RAM, hard drive space, and optical drive, it wouldn't be out of the question to use this eMachine for video editing. And that's a statement that we've probably not made before. Another nice perk is that the T6420 is running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a helpful operating system for multimedia editing and usage.

EMachines has included some nice extras with the T6420 desktop computer for home users. The 8-in-1 digital media reader makes it easy to transfer files from your PDA, digital camera, or MP3 player to the T6420 system. The media reader includes ports for Secure Digital, CompactFlash, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, as well as other forms of flash memory cards. There's a USB 2.0 port in the reader to connect high-speed peripherals to the front of the system easily.

The silver mid-size tower features four more USB 2.0 ports on the rear of the system, so you won't run out of connectivity room for devices too quickly. A modem and a network interface are there to hook your T6420 up to either a dial-up or a broadband Internet service provider.

EMachines includes some other basic items with the T6420: The input devices feature a multimedia keyboard with some programmable hot buttons and a straightforward two-button mouse. There's a two-speaker set that won't blow you away, but provides adequate sound output with the home desktop computer. The integrated sound is 5.1 channel audio, so you can upgrade to a surround sound speaker set and the T6420 will be able to pump out good six-channel sound.

The software bundle includes Microsoft Works 8.0, Microsoft Money 2005, and a six-month membership to America Online: not stellar, but decent enough for some basic word processing and handling home finances.

While not entirely cutting-edge, the T6400 series of desktop computers for home users provides great power, decent gaming performance, and still sell for an excellent price.


Pros: Powerful components, great price
Cons: Integrated graphics, no monitor

Warranty
1-year limited