eMachines Goes Back-To-School
By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 7/12/2004
IRVINE, CALIF.— With the introduction of three eMachines-branded desktop PCs, Gateway is sticking to its promise to keep the brand firmly focused on the entry-level portion of the market.
The models carry suggested retail prices of $399, $499 and $599, after $50 rebates, and have started shipping for the back-to-school selling season.
The leader model is the T2824. It is powered by an Intel Celeron D and a 2.53GHz processor, and features 256MB of DDR SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, a combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive and an eight-in-one flash memory card reader.
The step-up model, the T2958, has the same features as the T2824, but adds a slightly faster Celeron 330 processor, 512MB of DDR SDRAM that is expandable to 1GB, and an 80GB hard drive. The line is closed out with the T3902. For this model Gateway switched to the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ processor, at about 3GHz, 512MB of DDR SDRAM that is expandable to 2GB, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX graphics card, 160GB hard drive and a dual-format DVD burner.
Gateway finalized its purchase of eMachines in March. At that time, the company promised to keep eMachines positioned as a leader in the entry-level segment of the desktop and notebook markets, while its own Gateway-branded models aimed at consumers with larger wallets. Gateway is not selling eMachines products through its Gateway.com Web site, but the units are for sale in a variety of retailers.
