Emachines E725-4520 Notebook Review

I guess sometimes it doesn't pay to shop. I as a rule of thumb don't shop when I go into a store. Or did it? I usually go down get what I need and leave the store because I usually end up spending money I don't want to spend. This was the case on Monday of this past week. I found my self with a day off and had stop at Walmart for some groceries. I had been wishing that I could get a new laptop comptuer for my self so I thought I might get one after I accomplished my financial goals for this year. Kind of a reward for doing what I need to do.

Now, I like Dell computers. I have owned about 3 or 4 of these Dell machines and they all have worked well. Matter of fact my old Dell D400 laptop still works, it is just starting to fall apart. It is six years old and the battery in it doesn't hold a charge any more. It is missing the backspace keep and it runs really slow. I have a hard time getting the computer to connect to the internet anymore. My son with his new laptop doesn't seem to have any problems. I bought this Dell Used over three years ago. At this point and I really didn't want to spend any money, but I was looking at laptops at Walmart just trying to figure out if I would buy from a store or order one from Dell when the time came. The nice thing about ordering from Dell is I could customize the machine anyway I wanted it. The down to that is it ends up in one spending more money on it because I would add a faster CPU (Processor), more memory, and more hard drive. I probrably wouldn't add much else in the way of frills.

I was at Walmart looking at the laptops when I came across this laptop the Emachines E725-4520. Walmart had this for $298 plus tax. There was a lady in front of me who was telling me she was going to buy two of them. One for her son who was going way to college and one to upgrade her old one. Hers was about six years old. I stood there staring at this machine trying to decide if I should buy one or not. The fact that it was an Emacines computer bothered me, but the price was a great deal. The macine is built by Acer corporation. I have had a two Acer computers over the years and both were good machines. So when I discovered that it was build buy Acer I was a little more statified with my purchase. They two I owned still worked when I sold them. This laptop has a Intel Pentium T4400 2,2GHz dual core processor. The sign said it has 3GB of DDR2 memory, but everything I have read about it says it actually has 3GB of DDR3 memory (even better). It has a 250GB HD and DVD Super Milti 8X drive, 802.11b/g WLAN, Windows 7 home, 15.6 inch 720p HD screen, and a built in memory card reader. Walmart sold two of these to the lady I was talking with, sold one to me, and sold another one just as I was leaving. So they sold four of the forteen they had in about five minutes. By thursday of last week they had sold them all. Even the display model was gone.

The only thing I am slightly disappointed with this new laptop is the sound from the speakers leaves a little to be desired. I, however, am not a big play movie clips or audio clips via my laptop. I basically want this for portaible computing power. In the event I get laid off at somepoint I will need a decent laptop to connect to the interent at say Mc Donalds, Wendy's, or Taco Bell to search for work. I do have a buch of exteral speakrs that I can plug directly into it if needed. Plus it would be rude to be jamming at one of those places when someone is trying to eat. It might have been nice had they added an HDMI port on the computer so I could connect it directly to my 720P HD big screen TV. I am a big syfy fan and there are shows available that at places like Hulu I could stream from the internet to my big screen TV from the laptop. All in all I am happy with my purchase. The good news is I didn't spend a thousand dollars for it. Heck, I spent just a little more than you can get one of those small Netbooks for.

Look Ma no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse? FREENAS

So what can you do with a computer with no monitor, no mouse, or a keyboard?

Here is the thing, I wanted a centralized location to store my files so that if I want to access a spreadsheet from my laptop I could open it up work on it then save it and have it available to my desktop computer. My son also has his laptop here from time to time it might be nice if he wanted to look at photos I have taken if he could do that. I looked into getting a "Network Attached Storage (NAS)" that I could just plug into the router. Basically this networked attached storage is just a hard drive with a network card so that you can attach it to your DSL/Cable/Fios router as another device that all your computers on your home network can see.

My problem was that I have two different versions of windows. I have XP and Vista. The vista machine can see the Xp machine (The laptop), but the laptop could not see the desktop. If I wanted to work on something on the laptop I had to copy it down to the laptop, work on it, then copy it back. Sometimes after work I am just too tired to want to go through all the hoops. I also didn't want to spend any money at this time so what is the solution.

So I did what I always do I search the internet for a free solution to my problem. I had an old HP computer sitting here collecting dust. It had long since stopped working as a desktop computer and I was about to just throw it out. The nice thing is this computer has 260 gigabytes of hard drive space. Not a lot, but enough to get me started. And as you see by the little box sitting next to the computer you can attach USB drives to the system and make them available. The one I own is a 250 gigabyte western digital drive. I stumbled on this operating system call "FREENAS". IE: Free Network Attached Storage.

Now, it took me jumping through some hoops to get this setup. First you have to create a CD from an ISO file which I had never done. The first one didn't work. Second you have to be able to boot from the CD on the intended install computer. Low and behold the primary CD device on this machine had died and the secondary one the software didn't recognize. I had an addtional computer siting around that was way older than this one, but it still had a good CD drive in it so I replaced the CD rom and finally got the software installed. Once installed you can access the machine like a file server and it can be administered from a webgui. For those of you who are mac users it supports apple file formats and itunes. It also allows me to have my own personal website setup on that computer. It will replace the current personal webserver that I had since it was on a older slower machine. Since I have dynamic ip I have to have a service like http://www.dyndns.org/. I am still learning about FreeNas, but at this time I am highly impressed and over the past week has served the purpose I have for it well. The speed of access from that machine is increadable even over my wireless connection. The operating system its self only takes 64 megabytes to run so it is really small. For now I have plenty of harddrive space and if I need more I will buy a USB drive to add to the system. Today I am taking my laptop with me to Mc Donalds for breakfast and will see how the personal website looks via their free wifi. For more information about FreeNas click here. To download a copy click here.

Redbox DVD Rentals

Say good bye to your video rental store and say goodbye to the online video rentals and say hello to Redbox. Redbox allows one to rent current release DVD videos for a total of $1 plus tax for a 24 hour rental. New releases come out on Tuesday of each week. I had co-worker who was raving about his one day and suggested I try it. I thought I will give this a try at somepoint. Well, last Thursday was that day.


I went on line to http://www.redbox.com/ and signed up online. I then went around the corner Walgreens and proceeded up to the box. I selected a movie to rent, entered the information to verify my identity, and swiped my credit card. The movie was then vended out of the slot in the side of the machine.


When I got home I checked my email and there was an email indicating that my total was $1.07 if I return the movie by 9pm the next night. I had rented this around 12pm on Thursday. I watched my movie and took it back around the corner to return it. I selected that I wanted to return a movie was prompted to put the DVD in with instruction on the dvd how to do it. I placed the DVD in the machine and the screen indicated that it was returned. When I got home checked my email and a confirmation was there indicating that it had been returned. I did get an email for signing up and giving them an email for a free rental which I will use this week. I have also read because I gave them permission to send me text messages via my phone I will get one free rental a week. I will wait and see what happens this week.

All in all this is a very slick idea. Very convenient as I have one less than a mile from my house and worked really well. I will be trying this again this week with my free rental code in hand.

Happy 70th birthday Dad!

I want to wish my dad a happy 70th birthday.

Taking the HD (High Definition) Plunge

A month or two back my sister suggested that I take my family room and set it up as a family room. Looks like that has worked out to be a great suggestion. When I started work on this room there was a model railroad layout in the one corner with stuff piled around it. I have been working to get rid of , sell off, or throw away stuff to clean out the area. I also moved some of the stuff to a storage area in my utility room. It has been a pain staking process.

The one thing I added to the idea was a 42" plasma TV that I mounted in the one corner of the room. I finnally on Friday managed to get the TVmounted and all the cables run for the antenna connection. This is my first High Definition TV and I am amazed at the picture clarity on the channels that are broadcasting in HD. Sunday my son and I went shopping for the TV stand were the DVD recorder is sitting and the kids Playstation two is located. The old Playstation stand is now a home for my laptop. I purchased an additional recliner from the kids mom so there are three seats in the room. I am using the old convert box as a tuner for the DVD burner which will allow me to record one show and watch a show. The kids seem really pleased with the idea. My son was more than willing to give me input on how to set it up.

This afternoon I got off work early and finished the work. The work I did today involved moving the stuff in the shevles to the opposite side of where they were. The video's behind the TV and the pictures to the other side. I hope the kids are supprised when they get here on Friday.

The Netbook

Back in October 2009 my son got a Acer Aspire Netbook. At that time I personally couldn't see what the appeal would be to get one of these, but for him it was the perfect first computer. It basically has the same amout of computing power as my Dell D400. My D400 is one of the smaller laptop computers with a full keyboard. My concern with this smaller computer would be could I type on it if I was using it or would my hands be to big for the keyboard and would this make the computer useless to me.

The first opportunity for me to use his computer came one night at Mc Donalds. He wanted to take it in and try it out as he had never had it connected to the internet. At that time Mc Donalds charged $2.99 for two hours of access (as of January 15th unlimited access is now free) to the internet. I spring for the $2.99 and in a few minutes we were connected.


While he and his sister played in the play area I tried this smaller and lighter computer out and low and behold I could type on the keyboard and use it just like my D400. My son recently wanted me to connect it up and take it on one of our railfan outings and I was highly impressed by how it performed. After we figured out how to make the screen brighter it worked out great.


The Acer Aspire uses a Atom N270 processor running at 1.6 ghz. My Dell D400 is about 1.4 ghz. The Aspire has 1 gb of memory and 512kb cach memory. It also has a 160 GB hard drive. The whole thing only weights 2.44 pounds. The down is no CD or floppy drive as that must be purchased seperately. His mom managed to get this computer for him for a mear $249 plus tax. I happened to have a spare external CD burner that I let him have to use with this that I bought back in 2002. All in all I am quite impressed with how well this computer operates and how light it is. When I decided to replace my current laptop I may just get one of these plus an external cd burner. I am a Dell man my self and I will be looking to see what they have.

Blogger M.I.A

Missing in action. This blogger has been missing in action over the past several months. Too much life at the current time. We had a major issue with my son back in December that saw him in the hospital from December 18th until December 30th. He is now on medication. The good news is he is doing a lot better now and is in his third week with no problems at school. I thank God for whatever it was that changed and for the great improvement that we have seen. I also want to thank all of you that prayed for him.

For the past few months I have been working fifty plus hours a week and what little time I have had left I have been devoting to cleaning up the family room area of my house. I am almost there with the family room. After working for a while each evening on that it seems like all I can do then is colapse on the couch and watch TV. The family room I am cleaning out the stuff that was in there. Selling it or getting rid of it if I don't think I will use it. The idea is that it will be a recreation room for the kids when they are here. Yesterday the kids and I went shopping for a 42" Plasma TV for that room. Today I spent some time mounting the bracket ont he wall on which I will mount the new TV on. All in all life is going pretty good at the moment. I am looking forward to getting back to blogging and working on my website. The website hasn't been updated in a year (YIKES!). I am in the process of redesigning the site to make it much easier to update. It currently takes about four hours to process just a little bit of stuff to the site. I am also looking forward to getting back out track side for some rail fanning.