Following some absence from retail shelves, Acer has resurrected the eMachines brand in the laptop space by launching the eMD620-5777, a notebook that's priced lower than many of the better equipped netbooks but has a more powerful processor, better graphics and more standard laptop features.
The new notebook is powered by the new Athlon 2650e (1.6GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB), which is a low-power processor from AMD that would supposedly 'beat the stuffing' out of the Atom - though there are no benchmarks to support this yet. Graphics come courtesy of an integrated ATI Radeon x1200 GPU; it sports a 160GB hard drive, runs Windows Vista Home Basic and carries a mere 1GB of RAM.
Other features include 802.11b/g wireless networking and a Super Multi dual-layer DVD burner, but it notably lacks Bluetooth, a webcam, and an ExpressCard slot. For $429, however, you are still getting a pretty decent system. The eMachines eMD620-5777 will be sold exclusively by Best Buy beginning November 1.