eMac makes 'Worst Product of the Year': PCMag

You get what you pay for.

I'm not the biggest fan of the eMac, but this guy makes it seem like there's only one option when buying one. "The 40GB hard drive will fill up quickly, the lack of a DVD burner makes offloading files impossible" - unless of course you upgrade the hard drive and the combo drive. Seems like a lame argument to me, kind of like saying Dell's computers suck because the most entry level model doesn't come with a dvd burner.

emac should be headless. up the specs a little, sell it at the same price.

The eMac is long in the tooth and due for an update soon. But it'll hold it's own against a $400 Dell.

I agree that it should be headless and sell for $495.

Not the eMac, but the article. I have one at home and boy is it great. And since it's a Mac, hey, it's great. This writer doesn't know crap! They just had to put a Mac on the list because they don't get it.

This is an eMac designed for education. It has the perfect specs for an education machine. They don't need huge hard drives and most of the machines are preffered not to have a burnable drive for security. For email, word processing and basic iLife apps this machine fits the bill quite well. Of course we all want cheaper and faster, but you can't have it all.

Show me a Dell with video card faster than the Radeon 9200, a DVD drive, and a HD larger than 40 GB? Oh, and it should also have Firewire ports, a 17 inch monitor, video editing and DVD authoring software, VGA output, built in microphone, multitrack midi/digital audio music recording/creation software, music library software, digital photo library software, calendar software, spreadsheet, database, painting, drawing, word processing software, integrated printing to PDF.
Just show me that freakin Dell for under 800 bucks! Guess what...it doesn't freakin exist.

I emailed him at jim_louderback@ziffdavis.com and this is what he wrote back:
"I'm just reflecting the review which we gave to the product this year.
As you recall, if you read all of our Mac reviews, we have been very
complimentary to Apple's products recently. But the eMac... it was our
lowest scoring desktop of the year, according to our lab analysts."

His lab analysts are wack.

It should be either be updated to a faster G4 or G5, or else made headless. Or both.

For the folks that are on a budget, the eMac is the best Mac available! How people overlook this is crazy. It (starts out) under a grand, has good speed, is small, and works well. Heck on Macintouch.com they have a speed review that shows its only slightly slower than the new flat iMac G5. I would still recommend it to any of my friends that just want to do basic stuff and don't need any expansion cards in the future.
I'm sure there has got to be some ugly PC that performs far worse and is a worse value for the money that could be the worst product. And the eMac is a 3 year old design... how about picking on products that were introduced this year, not older ones!?

Buy a Dell at half price and:

No FireWire

No video-editing software

same old 40GB drive which fills up quickly

same old CD-RW that cannot burn DVDs

use up three power plugs; wait, four, because the speaker power supply is going to take at least two plugs away from a power strip.

Wireless? put in a PCI card or USB tab and get 802.11b/g accessibility. The antanna is blocked in the back (poor reception) and USB easily stolen.

What the writer mentioned are idiotic reasons to put a computer down.

eMac does have a screen that looks flat if you look at the glass surface by itself--the inside is convexed toward the user. Why is it not mentioned? The screen is just about the worst I have seen, and I am sure people will agree.