Computer help forum: viewing HD videos

You'll be better off getting a full-blown cpu in a laptop. In other words, find a Intel or AMD based laptops that uses i5 or AMD cpus that aren't Celron or Sempron based. These cpus are better capable of handling more demanding tasks. They are NOT the bottom end of the cpu pool.Comapre the specs and see the difference.

tada -----Willy

In addition, eMachines is now an Acer brand. You really don't want to touch an Acer system with a stolen 10ft pole for any kind of serious use.

While I haven't been directly involved in dealing with Acer's warranty repair system, I've worked with people who are, and even if it's a brand new unit, they just released the model yesterday, good luck getting it repaired. Acer pumps out a new model about every 6 months or so, so they never really have any intention of making good on their warranty, since they don't really stock warranty repair parts. Combine that with Acer's rather liberal interpretation of quality control, and you want to run for the hills.

If there is a corner to cut, Acer will cut it, and then some. That is how they produce such cheap systems.

Another knock against this unit besides the low end CPU is the low end graphics, and the fact that for some reason it's running Windows 7 x64 on only 2GB of RAM. The latter isn't a problem really so much as a curiosity. A 500GB HDD by today's standards is maybe the low side of average.

When you get down to it, you can't expect prime rib on a dog food budget. Like pretty much everything else out there, the old saying about getting what you pay for rings true with computers. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it does apply in a general sense. You buy a cheap crappy low end computer and you get cheap crappy low end components.

When it comes to desktops, anything less than $500 before any short-term promotional discounts, is probably something you want to avoid like the plague. Even at around $500 you're getting into the barely acceptable territory. The more you spend, the more likely it is the thing will be of quality build and last you more than 6-8 months. With laptops, you don't want to spend less than $1000 I would say, because you can't upgrade laptops as readily as desktops, and for the most part you're stuck with whatever hardware you buy early on. Plus laptops are much more tightly integrated, so you want to make sure you're getting better quality components.

What did I use?

VLC PLAYER. Works nice enough without the overhead of Windows Media Player. That is, your machine playing content with WMP may never work well.

Be sure you are not running other things in the background as there is only one CORE in that CPU.
Bob