Micro Center is a regional computer retailer with a store close to me. I'm typically in there every week or two looking at toys. They have competitive pricing, but I do business with them because of their good service.

I've had my eye on this eMachines® eMD620-5102 at $359.99 for some time. Today I got a mailer saying it's on sale at $299.99. Yeah, it has a low-end CPU, benchmarked at midway between my five-year old AMD Athlon XP 2200 and a Pentium IV 2.8 GHz. But it's a full-size machine with 2 Gb RAM, a 14" screen and a DVD writer.

They also have this Refurbished Presario CQ50-215NR with a 1.9 GHz AMD® Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor QL-60 and 2 Gb RAM, a DVD writer and 15" screen for $399.99. I'm not big on Compaq after the power-connector issue turned my R3230US desktop replacement into $1500 worth of junk, but presumably this one was built after that was resolved. It has a 90-day warranty. (I'm interested in comments on issues with 64-bit processing.)

Neither is ideal for full-tilt music production, but if you need mobile computing that would also serve as a music 'sketchpad', these are definitely worth considering.

R.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."