Emachines M6807

Bowkiller picked up the m6805 which is the same thing minus the DVD burner. He seems to like it and the build quality. As soon as they get these in stock at the local Best Buy or Circuit City, I'm checking them out...especially now that they have the 5400 rpm drive not the 4200 people were originally stating. $1549 for all that is a sweet deal.

My opinion: I went to look at it and played with it a bit yesterday at Circuit City, it seems to be a very nice laptop for the money. The build quality to me is one notch down from a compaq or dell, but tis thing will last you for years if taken care of. The guy at CC said that it has been a very HOT item and they are down to 1 left, and may people have been calling about it. I say get oe while you can, for $1500+ it is a excellent deal !!!

There are several lengthy discussions of this laptop here.

BestBuy has a $250.00 rebate on this system this week, bringing the price down to $1,250usd.

mjh

Dell's site seems to be down (either that or my computer just isn't cooperating), but if the 8600 has a GeForce FX, DO NOT get it.

I would get the m6807 over the dell, it is cheaper, faster (except for a small margin on games),roughly the same size/weight, and from what I have heard, equals or bests the dell in build quality. I know its build quality beats my old dell 8100 and most of the laptops around it in best buy. My dell flexes if you touch it, the emachines required a lot of effort to make the case bend.

I finally got to check out the 6805 at best buy. Overall it seems like a nice machine. It did have the 5400 rpm drive. The display looked bright and crisp. The keyboard felt solid and responsive. The only thing that kept me from pulling out the credit card was the fact that the one on display had a disconcerting fan noise. Not loud, as in rushing wind loud...but loud, as in blender loud. The fan seemed to be hitting something inside the case. It was loud enough to hear over the "perpetual stereo demonstration" (if you've been in Best Buy you know what I mean). If I pressed down on the area left of the touch pad the noise would lessen but never completely go away. Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe Best Buy puts their out their "less than perfect" systems for display because of all the people that eventually push, poke, and prod them in the store but strange noises and questionable construction are the reason I'm not going with a Dell. For 1299 after rebate I'd be hard pressed to build a desktop Athlon 64 system with similar specs and LCD for less...so I really want to like this notebook. But, this system was just put out today and is already making odd noises. That does raise some concern for me regardless of how great the deal is. Maybe those who own one can add their input about build quality and durability?

I just picked up a 6805 last Sunday.

My short list of complaints after 3 days of ownership includes:
- Half-size space bar

- 4200 RPM HD

- Wierd placement of the insert key (beside half-size space bar)

- Currently locked at 800 mhz on battery
(should be fixed by a driver or BIOS update!)

- Too much 'junk' software preloaded.

- Not much information available on the eMachines website. (this is a new
series of notebooks; information should be more readily availble in the near
future)

However, my likes after 3 days include:
- Performance/Price ratio! (based on outside information; I will run my own
benchmarks and games in the coming days)

- Charged battery overnight; then watched a 1 hour 41 minute movie,
scanned my hard drive with Norton AV for the first time for the next 8
minutes, and then surfed the internet for an additional 41 minutes before
the battery died. Overall, 2.5 hours of DVD, HD, and wireless. Not bad
considering the high use of power hungry devices (DVD, HD, 54G)!

- The build quality seems average/above average to me. I am very
pleased with build quality. From my 2 month search locally, it is better
than the Dell 8600 and HPs and equal to or better than the Gateway 505
and 675 or Toshiba laptops.

- Very good screen quality so far (DVD playback) I will have more
on screen quality once I load my games and test them.

- Besides the wierd placement of a couple of keys, the keyboard 'feel' and
response are great!

- Very good touchpad and touchpad button 'feel' and response.

- The speakers actually sounded very good for a laptop when playing the
movie in PowerDVD.

- Environmental aspects (noise, heat, and weight) are suprisingly better
than expected!

So, overall I must say that I am very pleased with the quality and value of
my laptop purchase! Add to this the fact that it is an eMachines, and I would
say that I am suprisingly pleased!

Anyone with one of these (and I know thats a bunch of you now) been brave enough to crack it open and let us know if its using a socketed Athlon-64??

Matthew

Matthewtoney, you and I see to be looking at the same computers. I e-mailed e-machines and they said it couldn't be removed leading me to think its soldered(big strike against this system for me), but maybe they were just blowing me off (They also said they used only 4200 RPM hard drives). I checked it out in a best buy and it is decent looking and has a decent build quality (much beter than the e-machines of two years ago that gave the company its bad name). Oh, the 800 MHz powermanagement flaw everyone complains about ia not too annoying, I switched power management to always on or desktop and it cranked up the processor to 1.8 GHz. I would be very interested if someone cracked open of these babies and clarified the processor status (come on, one of you must be interested... )

Hi guys...

I also got mine running at 1.8GHz, no probs (get rid of 'emachines power management' option, put 'always on' - I always have mine plugged in anyway.)

But what's the story on the speed of these animals, vs. a P4? I had a P4 2.66MHz, with 512MB cache; this A64 has a 1024Meg cache. Methinks that must help...

What if any benefit can we expect in the near future, having thrown in our lots with A64? Which apps if any will currently show an actual speed benefit from A64 system over a P4?

BTW, mine has the 5400 rpm hard drive... :-)

Cheers,
Dave

hey all

great discussion going on here im def picking on up.
my only question is

where can i get one! im a canadian (about an hr north of toronto) we have no best buy or circut city (we have future shop,best buys partner?!)

and also how hard are they to upgrade the ram and harddrive to 7200rpm

at emachines.com there is no customizing option. Gee emachines should customize these bad boys and sell them themselves they would make a frickin killing from what i have read they are moving like hotcakes.

[quote=mahoney]great discussion going on here im def picking on up.
my only question is

where can i get one! im a canadian (about an hr north of toronto) we have no best buy or circut city (we have future shop,best buys partner?!)

QUOTE]

Why don't you go to the BestBuy or CircuitCity site and see if they will ship one to you. What I understand is that FedEx or UPS 2day is the best option to Canada re customs, fees, etc.

I am avoiding this two stores in my community to avoid the temptation!

actualy

my bad i just checked and they do have some in toronto area
i don't think they are carrying the new notebooks though

hrmm

i think im gonna wait for the 128mb ones to come out in feb any way

Upgrading the hard drive and ram should be fairly simple. I haven't done it, so I don't know for sure, but I doubt it's too difficult

mahoney - take a vacation to California... Buying a laptop at US dollars would probably save you enough to pay for the trip!

Dave

Huh? Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the other way around (that is, for a U.S. resident to buy stuff in Canada)?