Dude Review: E Machines EL1352-07e, Windows 7 Desktop PC

Not only is the brand name appropriate for me, it is also one of the top rated PC's at Best Buy! I hadn't really heard much about E Machines and I'll be honest, I kind of thought it was a low end Wal-Mart brand. I was pleasantly surprised when I did my research and found out it's not only a well reviewed brand but it's also EASY ON THE WALLET!

I did a lot of research on what my next computer was going to be because I knew that I was pretty much going to use it as a media center. I used to have a pretty nice 17" Dell laptop...for 2005 that is. Don't get me wrong, it was a great PC and I even had it hooked up to my TV for a lot of the time and we watched hulu from it. I couldn't stand having a laptop sitting on the floor and a VGA cable running from it to the TV any more and I figured it's been 6 years, it had a good run, but it was time to upgrade my computer. So, I sold it on craigslist for about $185, which is ridiculous but it's what everyone else was selling my same exact laptop for.

For a while, I was hell bent on getting a Mac mini and mounting it to the back of my 40" LCD TV but those beasts are like $700! Wish I had the fundage, but it wasn't going to happen, not for a while anyway. Then I found a Dell that was the same size as a Mac mini, but I read bad reviews on it, so decided to keep looking. I wanted to just sell my laptop and go directly to Best Buy and get a replacement. Why Best Buy you ask? You guessed it, (if you read my review of the Roku) I have a Best Buy credit card, therefore I could put down my $185 and then cover the rest on the card. I gave myself a budget of $400 and so when I went on the BB website, I found the best reviewed desktop and it happened to be an E Machines and it ALSO happened to be compact! That's what I wanted!

So, I sold the laptop, went to Best Buy and they had ONE left! It was $365, just the tower itself, no monitor and I was out the door spending just slightly over $400. This computer is pretty damn impressive and completely accomplishes everything I need it to do! It has 4g of ram and a 500 gig hard drive. Came with Windows 7 of course and also has an Nvidia graphics card. HD movies and hulu look awesome on it and it is extremely fast! I used to have some glitching when I watched streaming tv shows but now it's totally smooth. I can have as many pages as I want open, play music, edit movies, photos etc. and it doesn't even flinch!

I am extremely happy with this computer and even though I can't mount it to the back of the TV, it is still pretty small and inconspicuous. I could put it behind the TV still but I use a wireless mouse and keyboard and the signal gets interference if it has to go through the LCD screen.

I highly recommend getting this computer and using it for a media center. You can always get external hard drives if you need more space. If you just used it as a family desktop PC, it would be great for that too. Even though TV's are now coming with all the movie and tv streaming apps, they still can't top having a full on computer on your TV at all times.

Get the E Machines EL 1352, hook it up to your LCD, LED or Plasma, get a wireless mouse and keyboard, and you won't be sorry!

Dude Review: Roku XD Streaming Player (From Guest Blogger Ethan Fox)

Even though I very badly want a decent 32" LCD for our bedroom that has the Netflix app built in, Larissa and I just don't have the funds and I'm not sure when we will. Did I mention it's dangerous to have a Best Buy credit card?? Well, it is! Anyway, we've been watching a lot of Netflix in our bedroom before we go to sleep, King of the Hill to be exact, and the way I was doing that is I brought my Blu-ray player into the bedroom (because it has the Netflix app) from the living room and I'd temporarily leave it there until we wanna watch a DVD or Blu-ray in the living room again. This got frustrating really fast because the way I have my gear setup, it's not easy to disconnect the Blu-ray player and hook it back up again.

You'd think since I work in the Audio Video industry, I would have thought of this sooner but I totally forgot about the Roku box. You can get them at Best Buy for $79.99 and it plays Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, and a bunch of "internet channels." Since Larissa and I have a Hulu Plus account now (our Dish Network got shut off because we can't afford the bill), the Roku box made perfect sense. Of course I did the dumb thing and put it on my Best Buy credit card, but I had no other choice because I'm brokety broke.

They also sell a $59.99 version on Amazon but I don't think it has Hulu Plus. If you want something very small that streams all the good internet based apps, the Roku box is the way to go! This is of course if you haven't just hooked up your computer to your TV. I did exactly that in my living room. I got a dedicated desktop PC that I use for torrents, Hulu, web surfing etc. I recommend doing that because there is no limit to the content you can watch on your TV. Why buy "Google TV" or "Apple TV" when you can just have a full blown PC or Mac dedicated to your TV!? Think about it.

The Roku box has a really nice interface and remote as well. It even loads quickly and has a fast Netflix interface, which is a big deal! The picture is really good, and I'm not even using HDMI, which it has, I'm just using composite! That's right, our bedroom TV is super old school and doesn't even have inputs. I had to get an RF converter just to hook up ANYTHING to it, haha. The picture is actually better on the Roku than it was on my Blu-ray player, which actually makes sense because the Blu-ray player is meant for watching Blu-rays...

So, do I recommend the Roku box? Absolutely!! If you wanna be able to watch Netflix and Hulu Plus on ANY television in your house, or even take it to a friends house (it's tiny and easy to take anywhere), it's perfect! It can be hooked up WIRELESS OR WIRED!! I ran an ethernet cable to our bedroom for it though because it's definitely faster with it wired, but the wireless option is nice!

Kindle 3 (Latest Generation), Wi-Fi, Free 3G, Graphite, 6" Display

I received my Kindle as a birthday gift from my fantastic husband, but later went to the different bookstores in my area and checked out the other e-readers on the market. Thankfully, I decided afterwards that my Kindle was the best e-reader for me. I am not a huge touchscreen person (my cell phone still has buttons and numbers), so what stood out most to me about the Kindle was the full keypad. The next thing that stood out to me was the texture quality of the "pages" - Amazon uses e-ink technology for these babies, so it really looks like I am reading a page from a book! As such, it works great in direct sunlight. Now, color would be great if I were reading a lot of illustrated children's books, but I read novels that don't have pictures so I am fine with the black ink-only situation. I didn't really care for the color display of some e-readers anyway, because then it's more like a tablet and less like a book, and I wanted my e-reader to stay as close to a book as possible (I hate that LED glare you see on the color devices). If I wanted a tablet, I'd just get an iPad or something (which has e-reader apps); why limit myself to just reading on a device like that?

Full Keyboard - yay, buttons!

E-ink handles black/white illustrations well

Okay. So I like how the Kindle looks (except the boring graphite - I jazzed that up with a skin showcasing Vincent Van Gogh's "Almond Branches"), but how do I feel about how it actually works? I love it!


* I love that I can read in direct sunlight without a glare.
* I love that I can adjust the font and size to match my preferences (I like my fonts slightly larger and sans-serif).
* I love that I can access the Amazon store and download books anywhere with the 3G capability, and I love how easy it is to search for books because of that full keypad. I love that it recommends other books by that author when I am finished with a book, which is quite handy when reading a series. 
* I love that I can highlight phrases that I like and store them for later reference (ahem, Facebook statuses?)
* I love the built-in dictionary - I never realized all the little details I was missing out on when I skimmed over a word I didn't truly have a grasp on and just tried to place it within context. And it's so easy to use! Just use the cursor to highlight the word you want to look up, and the definition pops up at the top or bottom of the page, depending on where the word is.
* I love that I can easily hold it in one hand - it's really lightweight! The one-handed thing is especially great when I think back to reading those 500+ page books and how tired my hand used to get after reading for 3+ hours. 
* I love that I can download free games! Sometimes I don't have a lot of time to read but I want to stay busy, so I'll play a little blackjack or a word game or two - it's so great.  
* I love that it holds up to 3,500 books (not that I'm anywhere close to filling it up).
* I love that the battery life is fantastic (I usually go a month or two without charging, depending on how often I turn on the 3G; I usually turn 3G off while reading to conserve the battery), and it only takes an hour or so to charge. 
* I love that it has experimental features such as music playback, web browser, and text-to-speech audio book listening. 

Thin/lightweight

Easy to hold in one hand

Speakers for music or audiobooks

While I love the music playback and web browser features, I haven't really taken advantage of the text-to-speech yet other than to make sure it works (it does). But just because I love these experimental features doesn't mean they're perfect. Here are some of my issues:

Music:
* There is no way to go back to a track, only skip forward. It would be immensely better to be able to use the page forward and back arrows to go from track to track, rather than only moving forward by pressing alt + F.
* It would be great if a menu containing our songs came up, similar to novels listed on the home page. 


Web browser:
* When I use the web browser on Facebook, 7/10 times it will freeze up, and the only way to fix it is to put it to “sleep” and wake it up again to make the Kindle work. None of the other buttons will de-freeze it.

Here are some issues that I have with the Kindle in general:
* I wish I could pick and choose which images I want to come up as screensavers. I LOVE the birds and fish (they make me happy), but could do without some of the author portraits.
* I would love to be able to delete books right from the home page, rather than having to plug the Kindle it into my computer to archive.
* It would be amazing if the screen could be gently backlit (with more of a golden light, not LED lighting). I am not sure if the e-ink technology would allow it though. I have a reader light, but still have trouble getting lighting just right at night. I know this is something an update couldn’t fix, but maybe something to hope for with Kindle 4?

Yes, that's right - the Kindle is so true to a book that you need a booklight to read at night! That is maybe a little too bookish for me - I kind of expected the e-reader to be backlit, because it's electronic. But then the accessories people would be out of a job, right? Oh, business politics. Anyway, maybe they'll incorporate backlighting someday. Either way, it's not a deal-breaker for me, just a (slight) disappointment.

Overall: I love my Kindle! After experimenting with other e-readers out there, this was definitely the one for me. I love the full keypad, I love the e-ink that gives it that "real book" look, and I love the features and ease of use. I do have a few suggestions (see above), but these are issues I can overlook because they don't compromise the functionality of my reading, which is what I primarily use my Kindle for.

Re-buy?: I hope that my Kindle 3 doesn't become obsolete almost immediately like many cell phones and other electronics tend to, but when it does, I will definitely upgrade (funds pending).