Im interested in getting a newer model of an emachines for home recording. Im wondering if its wise to use this brand of computer for such a ram taxing process. My past experience with emachines is not that well, but maybe the newer models are better. Can anybody help me?

What's an "emachine"?
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Bruce Valeriani - Mix Engineer

Yup, not heard of that, but as it is computer related question (I think) I've moved the thread.
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Recording Studio Suntans

Emachines is a brand of a PC. They are generally really affordable but in the past the quality of the computers were shit. Does anyone have any input on this subject????

Regardless of brand you want to be "looking under the hood", what's IN the box? - brand means very little when it comes to components used (the important bit).
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Recording Studio Suntans

There's really no such thing as a multi-use DAW.... for audio and particularly video production, you get a dedicated machine for the task - no games, no extraneous bullshit programs, no frivolous customizations.... so your best bet for a computer for audio/video use is a custom-built one....
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Bruce Valeriani - Mix Engineer

My largest gratitudes are extended to all who are responding to my questions. As of late I negotiated to buy a small laptop to do my online duties and use my compaq presario for recording. I've formated the hard drive and installed windows xp pro the computer is much faster now and I removed all the excess bullshit programs for maximum performance. My next step is to buy more memory. How much can a 256mb memory stick cost for a compaq???/

emachines will not cut it for quality audio (or video, or gaming for that matter). They're low-budget PCs for people who just need basic things like web, email, word processing, etc.

Custom built is the way to go.

What are the specs on your Compaq?
256MB upgrade on RAM is not much these days.

I’ve had an EMACHINES for 2 years now and its served well as my 1st DAW. I have a Pentium 4, 2GHz with a 400 MHz front side bus and 760 Mb if RAM running Cubage. Its a good performer at 24 bit 48 kHz, lets say with 16 tracks all with dynamics, EQ, and several reverb sends. BUT, at 96 khz its not so great, can only really handle about 6 or 7 tracks being processed. But that’s because plugins today need a faster CPU and front side bus. I've used an emachines laptop with the athlon 64 bit processor and a 1600 MHz front side bus and it performed very well at 24/96. I mixed 15 tracks with dynamics, eq, and several reverb sends without a glitch. So I can say if you buy one of their newer desktops (with either the athlon 64 or Intel 3GHz and higher cpu) you’ll get a pretty fast computer. Watch for the new pentiem Dual Core processors as well. one more thing, when buying a computer, its equally important to worry about the front side bus speed and L2 cache! (im surprised i dont hear more people talking about these two with computer audio in mind) you could have a 5 GHZ processor but if the front side bus is slow, say 200 MHz, then the processor wont really be able to perform at its worth. I will soon be buying another emachines, probably the T6520 with the 64 Athlon 3400 and 1 gig of RAM, because they are very reliable too. I've never had any problems with mine.