eMachines eOne - 1999 Apple iMac Knockoff

Greetings and welcome to an L G R thing .

And this is the E machines .

E 14 33 released in August of 1999 for $849 .

Although it was available for way less because that's what E machines did .

There's a $50 mail in rebate and then there was a $400 rebate .

If you signed up for three years of comp you serve 2000 dial up internet for 21 95 a month .

And yes , one of these things is not like the other , the obvious , let's state it .

This was built explicitly to cash in on the late nineties Apple imac craze complete with a not Bondy blue translucent color scheme .

Gosh , they just look so similar .

I can't tell which is the real one and which is the knock off .

And I got to give a huge thank you to Douglas for donating this .

These are not commonplace machines at all and for good reason , not only was the E one originally sold exclusively through Circuit City stores in the US , but Apple sued the crap out of them for daring to make such a blatant Imma rip off .

And that's a suit that they won and settled in March of 2000 with E machines agreeing to cease all sales of the E One as a result .

And Apple did not stop there either .

They also sued .

So tech , the Japanese firm who co developed the E One with E machines and was also selling their own version of the E ONE in Japan .

Within a month , the Tokyo District court ordered so tech to cease all production .

And finally , Apple also sued Korean Firm Deu due to their own imma knock off the E Power PC , all sales of the E Power PC barred by a judge in San Jose , California and Apple won a worldwide injunction against all sales of the E Power PC as well as our E machines .

E one .

So yeah , the fact that I have one of these banned things in my possession is pretty wild to me considering it was only on the market a few months and apparently didn't sell very well even when it was legal to do so .

But before Apple buried them with litigation , E machines marketed this as a computer for people who dug the aesthetic and form factor of Apple's hugely popular Bondi Blue imac but wanted to run Windows 98 instead of Mac Os nine .

It was also less costly than an IMAC by several $100 while technically including more features and higher specs .

For example , you got a 433 megahertz Intel seller on processor 100 megahertz more than the 99 revision D imac as well as 64 megabytes of PC 100 S D ram twice that of the IMAC an eight megabyte A I R L A P graphics chip set .

Two more megs than the imac and a 6.4 or 8.4 gigabyte ID hard drive again up to twice that of a base model iac , they even included a keyboard that more closely resembled Apple's keyboard than anything on the PC side of things at the time , which is not a good thing .

In this case , the layout is weird and cramped and it just feels plasticky and gummy to the fingertips even compared to the Apple board , which I'm not super fond of either .

And instead of putting USB ports on each side , like the I A E machines went with dual P S two ports instead reminiscent of what Apple used to do with a DB .

You plug in a mail to mail cable on either side and then the mouse in the opposite port .

This means you can Daisy chain both devices into just one compatible P S two port if you want .

Although redundant in this case , since it has the individual ports on the computer itself , still E machines drew the line at copying Apple's famous hockey puck mouse .

Thank goodness , I don't have the original mouse from the E one , but you can see what it looks like here .

It's just a stylized mouse to fit with the rest of it .

I actually ran across this Kensington mouse that looks like it was made for the E one at Goodwill a while back .

So that's what I'll be using here .

This color scheme of translucent dark teal was just super popular at the time .

And then one of the biggest boasts of the E one was that it had a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive , a feature which the IMAC famously omitted due to them betting on the future being USB , a future Apple was correct about .

But hey , the E one has USB and a floppy drive .

So that means it's better , right ?

And at least it had a 24 speed CD ROM drive , although with a nonmotorized tray , not as impressive as the fancy slot loading mechanism of the late 1999 I A .

But hey , the imac didn't have this chin pop out panel that reveals CD player controls with a monochrome L CD panel .

How's that for some late nineties technological curb appeal or what about this little spot for connecting 3.5 millimeter audio jacks and a USB device in the front or around to the right side where you see these composite video inputs ?

Yeah , that's right .

The E one has a video capture capability .

There's no tuner , so you'll need something with a composite output .

So V C R s or cable TV boxes or a game console ?

Yeah , that's right .

You want to plug in your Sega Genesis to your E machines .

E one you can do that .

Resolution is not great and the colors are severely washed out .

But hey , it's here and it's pretty awesome .

Actually .

Also on this right hand side of the machine underneath a sliding panel , you even got some expand ability , an elusive thing in all in ones like this .

Granted , it came in the form of PC M CIA slots normally seen on laptops .

So upgrade options were kind of limited .

But yeah , this is also where you'll find the I O section for things like 10 base T Ethernet A 56 K modem and FAX connection R S 2 32 serial port , another USB port , two P S two ports and speaker output for the series logics , S 42 80 sound chip that is supposedly sound blaster 16 compatible , but more on that in a moment .

And finally around the back of the machine next to the power , you get a parallel port for printers and such and a 15 pin game port for joysticks or connecting external midi devices .

E machines also imitated the carrying handle on top like the IMAC but it's pretty awful .

It's made of cheap plastic with sharp edges , that kind of feel like it'll slice your hand and every time you lift it up , it detaches itself from the plastic on the front of the case .

I'm gonna to hazard a guess and say build quality was not on the agenda .

There's also this terrible little microphone built into the top of the monitor housing and yeah , just check it out .

This thing is it's not good testing this crappy microphone , testing this crappy microphone still shoddy quality .

Aside , you got what appeared on paper to be a fine list of features housed in an attractive case that included a 15 inch C RT and stereo speakers .

A rather soft C RT with lackluster color reproduction and speakers that sound cheap and tinny .

But yeah , an attempt was made .

Speaking of speakers , let's talk about sound .

You know , the sound blaster 16 compatibility I mentioned , well , it's kind of here just listen to it trying to play Duke Newcomb three D's theme song .

Well , in case you didn't notice it's missing half the notes .

That's awkward that it is at least pretty decent at doing PC M sound effects through sound blaster emulation .

But when I use this , I swear you can hear a Yamaha engineer crying somewhere in the distance .

This is seriously one of the worst F M synth emulations I've ever heard .

Just listen to Canyon dot mid .

Uh And now in case you're wondering , it does not have any general Midi or wave table audio on board or at least if it is the drivers that this one came with , do not support it .

But as you saw the connection earlier , you can connect external midi devices if you really wanted to .

Also interesting is that there are zero monitor controls on the case .

You have to do all the color brightness and geom adjustment through a control panel plug in .

That's not the most unusual thing , but even the DE Gaus is done through software .

That's something I've never seen before .

And yet , despite a lot of crap , I mean , as far as late nineties Windows games and software , it runs that stuff pretty ok .

At least for a 433 megahertz seller on with an integrated eight meg A T I R card .

See , you know , games like Starcraft are totally fine games like Quake three or not , but it's playable .

So that's something , it was also available with a 500 megahertz C P U .

So assuming it's not so to the board or something stupid like that , I guess you could upgrade this thing .

But that's something that I'm not going to dare doing .

I tried opening this up and it was an absolute nightmare .

It's almost like you had to destroy parts of it to get to what you really wanted to do .

It's not personally worth it to me to bother with that .

So 433 Megahertz it is and that is the E machine's E one .

What a piece of junk , but an incredibly fascinating piece of junk with a tarnished , legally dubious legacy .

And , you know what , I'm just kind of partial to this translucent colored plastic that happened on several computers and technology products of the time .

It's admittedly cheesy and maybe even a bit off putting , but at the same time , oddly attractive and very much nostalgic , you know , I just like all in ones so I like messing with this thing .

And , uh , yeah , that's about it .

I got no excuses .

I'm just weird .

Speaking of weird , there was a follow up of sorts for the E one by Gateway who purchased E machines in 2004 .

And I guess they liked the name and the idea .

So they released the Gateway one in 2007 .

And thankfully , this didn't seem to infringe on any other IMAC trademarks or design disputes or anything like that because it was sold and forgotten .

And , uh , well , that's not a happy ending either .

But anyway , that's all for this video .

And I hope that you enjoyed watching what you just did .

I always like taking a look at bizarre computers from the past and just talking about them if I can get my hands on them .

And I've got a lot more to talk about in the future .

So stick around .

There are new videos every Monday and Friday here on L G R .

And as always , thank you very much for watching .