I just found an ad for an Emachines T3638 desktop with a Celeron 420, 1GB RAM, Vista Home Premium, a 17" widescreen monitor, and a decent Canon all-in-one printer for $200 at Best Buy a week from today (Black Friday). Since it's a leaked ad which hasn't been published, I understand that it could contain false information. However, it has got me thinking. My mom needs a new computer and I would like to step her up to dual core. And I need a color printer and a scanner. So if I could buy this combo and swap in a dual-core processor, that would fill my mom's needs beautifully. And I could take the printer, because my parents already have a much nicer printer and scanner. I'm having trouble finding any information at all about the Emachines T3638, so here it is: If this deal turns out to be legit, could I drop an E2140 straight in? Would I have problems with the BIOS detecting the new chip? What about the OS? If there will be problems, how hard will they be to overcome? EDIT: I just spent some time in an online chat with Emachines support, and discovered that the motherboard in this computer is an ECS 945GCT-M3 and it does support the upgrade I'm interested in. My only question now is how Vista will behave if you introduce a new core. I believe XP required a reinstall in this situation, but I don't have much experience with Vista.
