The Cheapest computer is not always the best, the best known computers are not always the best. Do you remember the PS-2 from IBM(R) nothing inside was hardware compatible with any other part. None, really the floppy drive was not even compatible. It was an odd size and it did not have a sensor to tell if the diskette was 720k or 1.4M. So it would format the 720k as a 1.44 M and no other computer could read it except IBM PS 2(r). The power cord was the only over the counter standard part that could be replaced.

The cheapest computers were Packard Bell's  for a long time. They used mostly hardware that was not industry standard. Their power supplies and mother boards were strange.

In the past few years Emachine had been sold as one of the cheapest computers to buy. Gateway bought them a few years ago and August 2007 Acer(r) bought them both.

We will never have a $299 or $399 computer as long as Microsoft(r) forces the price for Windows (r) for a small white box manufacturer to cost us wholesale $80. It doesn't leave much room for hard ware does it?

But here is what people are saying about the Emachine problems. By the way the power supply kills the mother board and I have been told that Emachine has no socket "A" replacement boards. As you read this we are down to less than 20. When they are gone if you rebuild the Emachine it will take motherboard, cpu, power supply and memory. If the mother board did not fail it would cost $34 not $210 to $300 to fix it. So lesson here is:

We can repair your Emachine. We can replace most mother board's, put a 300 watt power supply in and reinstall Windows XP(r) you should lose no data unless the hard drive is bad. Do NOT keep trying to make the computer turn on, more damage will occur.