Customer Reviews

Acer eMachines eM250-1162 Netbook - 10.1" LED / Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz / 1GB Ram / 250GB HD / 802.11g/g Wireless LAN / Webcam / Windows 7 Starter

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this sight unseen at Wal-Mart yesterday. They had apparently received them for a day after Christmas sale but never put them on display. I saw a bunch of them sitting in the "laptop cage" with a price tag of $228 on it. I went ahead and bought it, figuring that if I didn't like it I could take it back.

Well, I love it and I am so glad that I did get it. It's a great little netbook and I am already getting used to the keyboard. My only complaint is with the trackpad - I wish it was slightly larger. It seems to me like it could be a little wider and not affect the overall size of the case.

The screen is bright, keyboard good, I've been happy with the performance of it so far...overall I would rate this as one of my best purchases of 2009. I might even go back and try to get one for my wife. Even though I paid less than what this is selling for on Amazon, I would not hesitate to pay up to $300 for this netbook.

DITTO THE WALMART STORY. Went home and read the reviews on Amazon. This emachine is identical to the Acer d250 minus the option for a larger battery, which you can purchase if you need it. So far I get a good 3 hrs browsing the internet. Great buy at $228.

Windows 7 starter is ok but does not come with an email client like outlook express(xp). Download Monzillia's Thunderbird, it works great and is much better than outlook express or windows mail.

In all this is a great netbook. Fast, good battery life, great screen, $price, and comes with 7.

As others have said go to Walmart and get one if you can find one.

I went into walmart today like everyone else and noticed this netbook. I didnt know how emachines netbooks rated so i went home and googled it, after realizing it is the same as the acer one i ran back and bought it. $228 how can you go wrong, battery time has been great so far but will probably upgrade to the 6 cell later. but as it is way more time then my laptop, seems to run fast enough but will upgrade to 2gb ram and linux soon. I love the case. I have been looking for a netbook for a while now this one really impresses.

Like many other reviewers, I too got this at Wally World. It was a steal for the amount of HDD Space they were offering at such the low price. Even though this has Windows 7 Starter, and not the ability to change your backgrounds, or the pretty transparent effects, Its just as fast as using Windows XP. I got a lot of my casual games loaded on it, and they ran great. I ripped a DVD from a program and copied it to the netbook using a USB flash drive. I was able to watch the whole movie using Power DVD version 7 using the mobile optimizations built into the program and still have a good battery time to play a game of solitaire before it truly died. You will get an average of 2 hours and 45 minutes with the battery depending on the tasks you do.

The memory card reader and the Wifi are great too. When you take a look at it in contrast, you are reminded that this is essentially an Acer Aspire One with an eMachines branding on it, so you will get the same quality as Acer as you will in this eMachine.

Overall , this is a nice netbook.

Picked mine up at Mr Walton's retail outlet for the current $228 price.

I was pleasantly surprised by the performance and overall functionality. Don't be scared by the eMachines label-- it's just an Acer in sheep's clothing!!

I've stripped off the MS Office trial version and installed Open Office 3.2.

Upgraded the memory to 2G for $40 on eBay and it runs like a little greased pig!!

Next upgrade will be a 6 cell batetry.

I test software for a living and have installed VMWare player along w/ 2 Linux VMs: Open SUSE and Ubuntu. The netbook handles the VMs flawlessly.

Connecting to my wi-fi router was a breeze and I was able to VPN into my office machine without any problems.

Sure Win 7 Starter is a little cheesey-- but, hey, it is a fully functioning (though limited) OS.

I've read stories of a number of folks just stripping everything off the HD and going w/ one of the Linux flavors.

I'm VERY happy with my purchase and demonstrate the machine to anyone at work who'll give me 2 minutes of their time.

So I'm looking at the Acer... this guy tells me "There's some netbooks with a 250G harddrive... and they're cheaper. Right over there." I look, and sure enough, there's a display of nondescript cardboard boxes that just had to ruin my night. Two sisters and a brother got the Acer 250... and I was ABOUT to. I wanted a BLACK one, though, not that funky blue or red or pink or purple, etc. They only had blue and purple Acers. So I strolled over to see this "cheaper" netbook, and convince myself that I'd be spending more for a "real" name with the Acer. Of course, having worked at IBM, we sent out HDDs we did with the following names: ACER, Apple, Hitachi, Sun, Toshiba, Dell, etc. So I know that sometimes "off" brands are really just "lucky rewards" for those "daring enough" to try them. I scanned the code with my Droid, found YOU FOLKS that wrote reviews... and then got one. Sent a pic to my sis... Sure enough, same as the ACER 250. But cheaper. Now, she got her Acer from Amazon, and she got it with a 9 cell battery, for $279, no tax, no shipping. But for $228, I'll take the 3 cell, the color I LIKE, and by the time I get the 9 or 12 cell, and the 9% tax I paid... I'll be in the same ballpark (a little less) than she did. Anyway, long story short - if you are reading these reviews, wondering if you'll be "skimping to save a few dollars" on this "no name" with the catchy "eMachine" logo... you'll be getting an Acer... and yes.. the "manager's" name on pages 2 and three of the Quick Guide IS INDEED hilarious. But you gotta splurge, buy it... open the box and then look. Hey, this is a great little unit, and I hope it's solidly built. It has two USB ports on the left side, one on the right... Webcam, internal mic, jack for an external mic, headphone jack, a monitor cable input, ethernet jack, and a multiple storage card reader. Had it on for a few hours and it's nowhere NEAR as hot as my HP laptop gets. I know this is a wordy review, but if you need ONE more person to convince you - then hopefully I'm it. I didn't want to "sacrifice" and not get the Acer I wanted. I DID get it, plus a significantly larger hard drive. Oh, it comes PRE-LOADED with MS Office, but it's a 60-day trial version. You also have MS WORKS SE, which basically means unless you upgrade, you get a small "advertisement" in the bottom right corner of Works SE. No problem, just use the WordPad (which has grown into quite the little word processor over the years, without the frills). I will probably use that for writing, then just slam it on a USB drive and into my desktop where I'll open it in MS Word and save it there. (why pay for that application on both?) For the money, you can't go bad. A good review has a bit of poop - here it is: Don't expect your concert hall sound from this lil fella. But with that little audio headphone jack, you can plug up to a speaker set and rock all those free songs some of you may use this little netbook exclusively for. ;) Hopefully, you read these reviews as you are tossing back and forth between the Acer... and the CHEAPER priced Acer sold as an eMachine. You have 15 days to bring it back to Walmart, though, so don't listen to that little old lady working graveyard shift who tells you you have NINETY DAYS... You don't. Good luck.

One week after my wife buys me this netbook she decided she wanted one also. Ran over to Walmart and they still had some left at $228.00. She love it.
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My wife had a $30 dollar gift card she got at work and knew that I wanted to get a netbook. We went down to Walmart and all of the netbooks on display were sold out. I looked down into the cage and saw several boxes and had the store clerk get one out. They were emachines with the price of $228. I asked him, "are you sure", so he went and got the department manager. She said that was the price but they did not sell a lot of them because of the brand name. Now I have purchased emachine desktops in the past for family members. They were inexpensive but we never once had a problem with any of them. With my wife's gift card it cost me $30 less. It works great for me. Even though it doesn't have an optical drive, I copied installation discs of my favorite programs onto a flash drive on my laptop and installed them from it. They all run great. I decided that Windows 7 starter just wasn't good enough for me so I installed Home Premium using the upgrade feature and was up and running within about 15 minutes. Just goes to show price isn't everything.

Purchased this unit on Friday, Jan. 8th, 2010 at Walmart. The clerks told me they no longer had them and when I saw three of them in the cage he then told me they were no longer $228 but now were $279. I told him I wanted to see the box so he got one out and then I told him to scan it. He was a little reluctant to admit it was still $228 but did so. All that said if you go to look for one of these look in the on hand inventory cages of the laptop section. I have seen them now that way in three stores and none on display or anyone to admit or realize they even have them.
Unpacked this unit and it was very well packaged and protected in fact better than some very expensive laptops I have purchased in the past. I plugged in the battery and powered it up and turned it on. Immediately it came to life and started the Windows 7 starter edition set up. Everything loaded it hooked up my wifi did the registration and it was ready to go. Display is clear and bright. Keyboard is responsive although the keys are a little small so it takes a little getting used to. Touchpad works very well. Good sound quality. Battery life about 3 hours, maybe a little more in power saving mode. Huge 250 gig hard drive much larger than most netbooks. Build quality is very good. This is without a doubt an Acer One with Emachine's name on it. The Acer's on display had 160 gig hard drives and were $299 so as I said this is a great buy. I upgraded the one gig memory to 2 gigs which was super easy as it has an access door with one screw to get to the chip. Also it has an access door for the hard drive so if ever needed it would be an easy replacement. I removed the extra trial programs, (Norton, MS Office and also reset the startup files removing some of the auto load stuff. Loaded the MS Mail program and set up the email accounts, downloaded the free Open Office program and AVG antivirus and you now have a very well functioned netbook! Loads well and everything worked perfectly from the very beginning. With the Emachine recovery manager and a external DVD writer drive you can create restore disks or you can restore the unit from a hidden partition on the hard drive. Super light unit and easy to take anywhere. Nice black and silver finish which looks more expensive than some of the higher priced units and brands. One year warranty which I don't know how good any service would be from Emachine but if it continues as it now works I don't expect to have to use the warranty. If you are looking for a small form factor netbook that has pretty much anything you would need in a netbook this is a hard to beat deal but I am sure they will disappear before long as the Walmarts that did get them for the never happened Day After Christmas Sale only got 10 of them so when they are gone they will be gone. If you are looking for this kind of unit get to looking and if you find one buy it. You will be very pleasantly surprised!

Less than 2 months into ownership, the charge port became loose internally. eMachines wanted to charge me $199 to fix it. They refused to acknowledge this as a problem and put the burden on me to prove it was not damaged by me (last time I checked, you cannot prove a negative). I'm not sure how you can internally loosen a charge port. eMachines actually said "it was fine when we shipped it." The customer support robot is useless, good luck trying to speak to a human. The last piece of crap I will ever buy from eMachines is about to get a sledgehammer taken to it.

Just like the person below I found this at Wal-Mart by accident. It was the middle of January and they had one just sitting down there. I was prepared to go over to Best Buy and spend a lot more but grabbed this one at $228 in a heart beat. So far it has been great. Oddly enough I bought my wife an ACER with a smaller HD for an extra $70 at the same time and this one is working much faster (even though ACER actually makes it)

Very Happy with the purchase.