Bargain AMD Athlon64-powered eMachines notebooks

IN THE LAST Cheap Basket column a long, long time ago (back in September), I did a round-up of AMD-powered desktop replacement notebooks. Some of you wrote me asking on what I based my buying decision. Here it is: I decided to break the piggy bank and go with the eMachines M6810 for two reasons: AMD Athlon 64 cpu which gives me the ability to run today's 64 bit linux and Solaris x86, and tomorrow's Windows-64, and the use of a "full" ATI radeon chipset (9600) which has official linux video drivers.

Add to the mix the lovely 1.54 inch wide screen, plenty of USB 2.0 ports (two on the side, two in the back), firewire, cardbus, and a nifty 5-in-1 memory card reader that accepts compactflash, mmc, sd, memory stick and memory stick pro. I received the unit last December and have been using it as my daily PC ever since. Expect to see the "Initial Impressions" and a full review shortly.

The bad news is that the eMachines M6810 is no longer available at Amazon.com where I purchased it, and it's going to be very difficult for you to find new ones on the retail channel. The good news for you Cheap Basket readers (and bad news for me I must add!) is that just five months after the original article, you are now able to get one at roughly 400 greenbacks less, -in factory refurbished flavour I must note-, with a full one year warranty. So if you want to get one of these systems, here's your only choice at TigerDirect.com. At roughly $1000 US dollars it's hard to resist the temptation to own a M6810. Unless of course you want to get the latest greatest models from Gateway that replaced the M6XXX line.

Refurbished eMachines M6805 units, sporting an Athlon 64 3000+ instead of the 3200+ of the M6810, but maintaining the rest of the features like built-in 802.11g, 512MB RAM, 15.4-inch WXGA wide screen, ATI Radeon 9600 with 64mb of dedicated video memory, CD-RW and DVD-ROM reader and a 60GB hard drive) are also available from TigerDirect.com at the incredible price of $899 (after a $100 rebate). Find these here.

If you don't think the 64-bit M6810 at ~ $1000 or the M6805 at $899 are good deals, keep in mind that for instance a cheaper Averatec notebook, without wide screen, with less ram (256mb) a smaller (40GB) hard drive, and without a 64-bit cpu (sporting a 32-bit AMD Sempron) is selling for $799. µ