THUS FAR...emachines have consistently put out extremely solid machines that work on the get go (according to PCMagazine reports)...I don't know how they do it, but they do. Their machines are supposedly much more solid in working than all but Macintosh's and IBM machines.
Their Tech support is not supposed to be the best however, but it is supposed to be better than Dell's current Tech Support (but not better than Dell's Tech support of 4 years ago...supposedly).
I say emachines is always a good and solid buy...but if you want to upgrade, be sure to know a lot about the integrated units they use...
I'm pretty certain some games wouldn't run all that well on it though, like Neverwinter Nights (if you follow directions my uncle put up for how to get that game to run on a Voodoo, you could get it to run I believe, but still not as well as on a Newer machine) will run jerky if at all, Anything requiring OpenGL 1.2 or above (this is for an emachines of 4 years or older...OpenGL I believe runs fine on current emachine releases) which includes many of the FPS games I play.
Overall, it's great to hear how solid emachines are...they are well made.