Nevertheless, those looking for an ultra-cheap laptop for basic Web browsing and word processing will find a capable companion in the eMachines eMD620-5777. Those who can't live without those features-and don't mind a smaller display-will be best be suited with a netbook such as the $499 Samsung NC10, which can last 6 hours on a charge. However, customers will have to put up with short battery life, no memory card slot, and two USB ports (most netbooks come with three). The $379 eMD620-5777 sports a larger screen and keyboard than similarly priced 10-inch netbooks, and it includes an optical drive. The notebook comes with a standard one-year warranty, which includes customer service from 5 a.m. Also included are trial versions of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 and a 60-day trial of Norton 360 Version 2.0. The eMD260 comes loaded with Windows Vista Home Basic and a handful of software, including Adobe Reader, Google Desktop, eMachines GameZone, a sampling of popular online games, and Microsoft Works 8.5. This is about an hour short of what we'd expect for a thin-and-light. ![]() The eMD620 lasted a disappointing 2 hours and 12 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi). Streaming music from was smooth, and watching Desperate Housewives on ABC.com was void of any pauses. The 802.11b/g Wi-Fi adapter turned in strong wireless throughput of 21.3 Mbps (at 15 feet) and 19.2 Mbps (50 feet), but it does not support 802.11n. Nevertheless, the eMD620's 160GB of space is plenty of room for your work, music, and photos. The 5,400-rpm hard drive performed our file transfer test at a poky 11.5 MBps and booted Windows Vista Basic in a minute and 28 seconds once we removed Google Desktop from the Startup list, boot time decreased by a few seconds. score of 23 frames per second at 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. In other words, you won't be playing 3D games and running graphics-intensive applications. The ATI Radeon X1200 graphics card managed scores of 1,405 on 3DMark03 and 233 on 3DMark06 these scores are slightly higher than the netbook average. Increasing the RAM to 2GB was easy (since the notebook has an extra slot), and while this change bumped up the eMD620's PCMark Vantage score by only 25 points, it improved multitasking in Vista Basic slightly we were able to run Firefox, MS Word, and Skype with less lag. While this configuration was more than capable of running Firefox 3 and Microsoft Word 2007 simultaneously, when we added running a DVD movie and Skype to the mix, the system became quite sluggish and took more than a handful of seconds to finish a task. This combination notched 1,224 on PCMark Vantage (about 1,600 points below the thin-and-light average). It's powered by AMD's Athlon 2650e single-core processor running at 1.6 GHz, and it has only 1GB of system memory. The touchpad is decently sized and offered a good textured feel as we navigated around the desktop, but the right and left mouse buttons clicked loudly.Ĭlick to enlargeThe eMD620 is a decidedly bottom-of-the-pack performer among thin-and-lights, but that's to be expected given its price. It's not so different from a standard keyboard as to throw off your typing in fact, we found it very comfortable, and the matte keys had a nice feel and bounce to them. ![]() Like Acer's TravelMate line, the eMD620 includes a full-size ergonomic keyboard, which has a slight smile-like curve. On the topic of sound, the eMD620's fan noise was noticeable but not overly distracting. The built-in speakers, which are located on the front edge, delivered decent sound: not as loud as some budget laptops we've tested, but enough volume and clarity to make the machine usable for streaming music or audio from a DVD. Though a 0.3-megapixel webcam was located above the display on our review unit, mass production units will not be sold with a webcam. While vertically tilting the screen caused a distracting glare, horizontal viewing angles were better watching the movie side-by-side with a friend was a pleasant experience. When we watched Elf on the DVD drive, colors were sharp and no noticeable motion blur appeared in a scene where reindeer dragged Santa's sleigh through Central Park. The 14.1-inch glossy display (1280 x 800-pixel resolution) is bright and delivered sharp images and perfectly legible text.
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