EMachines T5226 review

The two are neck and neck regarding support. Like HP, eMachines gives you one year of parts-and-labor coverage, plus phone support from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. ET, seven days a week. eMachines' online support is every bit as robust as HP's, with FAQs, driver downloads, and other useful information. Both vendors also give you the ability to turn control of your desktop over to a remote support tech, which is often a more-efficient way to troubleshoot an issue than working over the phone. We like HP's Total Care system status software a bit more than eMachines' BigFix patch-and-driver update notification service, but both programs work well at helping you maintain your PC over time.

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:

eMachines T5224
Windows Vista Home Premium; 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 820; 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 224MB (shared) Intel GMA 950 graphics chip; 250GB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

eMachines T5226
Windows Vista Home Premium; 3.0GHz Intel Pentium D 925; 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 224MB (shared) Intel GMA 950 graphics chip; 250GB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

HP Pavilion Slimline s3020n PC
Windows Vista Home Premium; 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+; 1,024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 128MB (shared) integrated Nvidia GeForce 6150LE graphics chip; 250GB 7,200 rpm Samsung hard drive

iBuyPower Value 640
Windows Vista Home Premium; 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6400; 1,024MB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7600GS graphics card; 320GB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive

Shuttle XPC X200M
Windows Vista Home Premium; 1.66GHz Intel T2300 Core 2 Duo; 1,024MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 256MB (shared) Intel 950 GMA graphics chip; 250GB 7,200rpm Seagate Barracuda hard drive