DVD Burners Making Their Way Into Budget PCs

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/DVD+burners--the+new+feature+in+budget+PCs/2100-1042_3-5535376.html?tag=nefd.top' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/DVD+burners--the+new+feature+in+budget+PCs/2100-1042_3-5535376.html?tag=nefd.top</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Gateway ushered in four budget PCs under its eMachines brand on Thursday, including one with a DVD burner and the low-end price tag of $499 after a $50 rebate. With the eMachines line, Gateway is hoping to gain market share with rock-bottom retail buyers. Although these PCs generally deliver lower margins than more expensive units, competition is fierce. "</i><br /><br />It's interesting to watch features that were once considered "high end" make their way into low cost systems. Today, even a common garden variety budget PC can do most of what a top of the line model can do...just not as fast. Amazing! Having DVD burners in cheap PCs is a nice step forward, but we need some easy to use creative software to make the user experience complete.

[Chris Gohlke]

I've been a fan of emachines for years. As long as you are not looking for a heavy duty gaming rig, you can get one of their machines for cheap. My 3 year old emachine died just last week and I went and bought a new one.

The package I got was $569 after rebates (plus I will sell the monitor and printer that came with it to reduce the cost some more).

Highlights of the system include

* Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 519 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2 cache and 3.06GHz processor speed

* 512MB PC2700 DDR memory for multitasking power, expandable to 4.0GB

* Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support records up to 8.5GB of data or 4 hours of video using compatible DVD+R DL media; 48x maximum speed CD-ROM drive

* 160 GB SATA

Full details here

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmprd29700050001&amp;skuId=999929600050001&amp;productCategoryId=cat01173&amp;type=product

[Jason Dunn]

Yeah, it's shocking how cheap DVD burners have become. Locally, up until about eight months ago, CD burners never got any cheaper than about $80 CND. When DVD burners started falling in price, it finally pushed CD burners down - now they're about $40-$50 CND. I can get a 16x DVD burner for $70 CND. Three years ago I paid $600 CND for a 2x Pioneer burner. Three weeks ago I bought a 16x Pioneer DVD burner for $99 CND. Man, times change! I now have three DVD burners in my office - every machine has one.