How much time and money are you willing to invest? Take the money, go to bestbuy.com, and see if you can't beat the deal with one of their clearance items. If you can beat it with a new machine, put the eMachines into desktop use mode and call it a day.

You can get a killer laptop these days for under $500 if you shop around. Just be prepared that it will do laptop-like stuff, like what you have with the emachines. No brands are immune. My 1000$+ ThinkPad did this to me last year.

-Scott

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