Craputer?
A crap computer. The term "craputer" has been coined to describe the onslaught of cut-every-corner, coddle-the-user, manufacturer-knows-best, pre-loaded-full-of-crap consumer-grade PCs made by eMachines, Compaq and others. Some earmarks of the "craputer" include:

• Sponsored icons and Internet links on the desktop, Free Demos and Special Offers popping up at random, one-touch "shopping" buttons on the keyboard, and other factory pre-loaded marketing crap
• Lack of a genuine Operating System installation disc or driver diskettes. Craputers often come with a set of "Recovery Diskettes" which, if used, will format your hard drive and restore your system to exactly how it was when you got it (in other words, re-load all the craputer components, regardless of how hard you've worked to get rid of them)
• Slow boot-ups and sluggish system performance; system memory exhausted by the large number of unnecessary background programs (media players, task schedulers, registration reminder nags, background tasks with cryptic names and unknown purposes) loading on start-up. Is the space next to your system clock overrun with little icons? Is the Ctrl-Alt-Delete task list full, even when you close all programs and have "nothing running"?
• Cut corners everywhere (cheapo components and missing PC Speakers, reset buttons, case fans, audio cables...)
• Opening the Web Browser brings up, instead of Internet sites, an advertisement nag for the manufacturer's Partner ISP, that you can't get rid of; Won't let you set it up to use your existing Internet account
• Power or Reset button that doesn't work, Malfunctioning Sleep Mode, and/or "helpful" power-management features that won't take no for an answer
• Several Gigabytes of your hard disk taken up by a "Recovery Partition" (SYSTEM_SAV) or other useless data
• Craputer maker's logo displayed during boot-up, covering up any boot-up messages that might alert you to problems or help troubleshoot your system
• Can't get into the CMOS setup to view or change settings (see previous)

>>For those who don't know, when you hit reset, your hardware
>>resets, and man, that's it.

>Unless it doesn't.  I have an Emachines 433i (marginally less
>crappy than my mom's Compaq Presario), and I've had it lock up
>to the point where the reset button no longer functions.

You're scarin' me.  I've been wondering when some clueless
know-best-for-you craputer maker would try to make "reset" into a software
function.  Could it be - ?

Speaking of e-machines, I've just been thru the hoops with a client's
brand-new "emonster 800."

I was absolutely appalled.  The whole damned thing is one huge marketing
operation.  Ad banners on the desktop at startup.  Custom keyboard with
buttons for every kind of shopping, but no real utilities.  Phone-home
"registration" widgets.  Pop-up e-marketing survey.  Free Special Offers,
demos, commercial website links, etc., are everywhere; about a dozen
sponsors' icons are on the desktop, with confusing and unclear labels,
begging for the clueless to be taken in with a double-click.

I was removing junk for an hour, and I'm still not at all sure it's gone.
The start menu still needs a final once-over, or else somebody's going to
click on a "free demo" installer or some other machine-altering and
intrusive gremlin, and I'll be back there for another hour of cleanup.

It's a commercial tour-de-force, but the system sure as hell isn't meant to
belong to its user.  Those manipulative bastards have sold out their
customers.  It's a mediocre system, sold at a low, low price that's really
just about right for a comparable generic system, hyped as a really-great
deal.  Which would be no big deal, but the damned thing isn't sold on the
basis that it's actually a seething mass of intrusive commercialism.  The
buyer is ambushed when he turns it on.

A while back, I saw some e-machines which, while definitely low-end and a
bit _too_ cheap, were structurally standard and weren't too bad for the
money.  Since then I told a couple of people who asked directly, that they
might be OK to buy.  Never again.  I hereby formally withdraw any such
recommendation.  These creeps have earned my lasting contempt.

I recently had my own run-in with a craputer, a Compaq Presario 7000Z owned by a close friend. (Close enough that he trusted ME of all people to reformat his hard drive and set up his craputer to meet the stability and performance I currently enjoy on my older, cheaper, homebuilt Athlon system. Mission failed, BTW...)