Daddles
18th February 2006, 01:14 PM
Long story - there is a 'help' in there though:(
I arrived at my gf's place on thursday, to discover that she'd bought her son a computer that day. Now, she'd been talking about this for awhile and we'd discussed slipping off to the local computer shop without the lad for a chat with someone who know what they were talking about without the distraction of the lad.
Now, neither my gf nor the lad know ANYTHING about computers - really, it's scary. The lad is also one of these 'must have the latest and greatest' types, and he's rather ... umm ... indulged.
Anyway, he had a day off school on thursday and they were in town shopping (let's ignore the topic that scenario opens ... please). They dropped into David Jones, my gf's favourite shop. And came home with a computer ... at $2,200 for just a computer, no printer or any of the other stuff that often comes with packages these days - not even cordless keyboard or mouse, but it does have a nice big lcd screen (I am jealous of that bit).
When I upgraded my son's computer recently, I spent a lot of time talking with the local computer boffin about what is needed to play the modern games (about all that matters to kids at this age). He wound up building me a system for $1,000 that he claims will play 95% of the games out there on the current market. So far it plays all the games my son wants to with ease, but not a couple that my gf's son wants to own.
So thursday night, we rock up at my gf's place to find this shiny new computer buzzing and beeping as they do. The boys then loaded their favourite game, which my son's puter plays with ease (Jedi Academy) ... and it wouldn't play smoothly. In fact, after checking to make sure everything was working as it should, we had to go into the game options and drop the quality of the detail and other graphics effects (from the default settings).
Thinking about it and remembering what the local boffin had talked about, I'm suspecting the graphics card isn't up to scratch. The computer is an HP (I didn't get the model number). It's running a Pentium 4 at 3.06 Gig, has 512 Meg of RAM, so it's no slug (but has a tiny hardrive by today's standards).
The graphics card is a 'GeForce 6200SE TurboCache' - sadly that means nothing to me and I was wondering if someone could shed some light on its abilities.
So far, my gf and her son think their new toy is wonderful. They're convinced that they've bought a great machine and did an absolutely wonderful job buying it. My gf is really proud of herself for managing what to her was going to be a very scary exercise. I'm looking at an expensive beast with a big processer that can't play the same game to the same standard as my son's box with a humble celeron (but carefully chosen video card) at half the price.
Apart from some feedback on the card mentioned above, some thoughts on what I do now would be appreciated. So far, I've kept my trap shut but if the computer has struggled with one game (a two year old game - Jedi Academy), I can see it struggling again, especially as the kid is determined to have the latest Need For Speed (apparently a top end game) - and guess who's going to have to 'fix' it. I'm suspecting that a HP isn't going to be cheap to upgrade, and I'm imagining my gf's face as I try to explain that she'll have to spend a few more hundred on top of what she's already paid, not to mention the realisation that she hasn't made such a good buy afterall (this is the bit that hurts me). On the other hand, they've owned the computer for a few days now and I don't know how she'd get on going back to David Jones and telling them she'd like a refund because the computer isn't good enough.
Sadly, telling the spoilt brat to pull his head in because his dodgy computer is the result of him nagging his mother into an impulse buy isn't going to work either, nor be understood, though it is what happened :(
Help? This is one of those cases where I'm damned whatever I do.
Richard
I arrived at my gf's place on thursday, to discover that she'd bought her son a computer that day. Now, she'd been talking about this for awhile and we'd discussed slipping off to the local computer shop without the lad for a chat with someone who know what they were talking about without the distraction of the lad.
Now, neither my gf nor the lad know ANYTHING about computers - really, it's scary. The lad is also one of these 'must have the latest and greatest' types, and he's rather ... umm ... indulged.
Anyway, he had a day off school on thursday and they were in town shopping (let's ignore the topic that scenario opens ... please). They dropped into David Jones, my gf's favourite shop. And came home with a computer ... at $2,200 for just a computer, no printer or any of the other stuff that often comes with packages these days - not even cordless keyboard or mouse, but it does have a nice big lcd screen (I am jealous of that bit).
When I upgraded my son's computer recently, I spent a lot of time talking with the local computer boffin about what is needed to play the modern games (about all that matters to kids at this age). He wound up building me a system for $1,000 that he claims will play 95% of the games out there on the current market. So far it plays all the games my son wants to with ease, but not a couple that my gf's son wants to own.
So thursday night, we rock up at my gf's place to find this shiny new computer buzzing and beeping as they do. The boys then loaded their favourite game, which my son's puter plays with ease (Jedi Academy) ... and it wouldn't play smoothly. In fact, after checking to make sure everything was working as it should, we had to go into the game options and drop the quality of the detail and other graphics effects (from the default settings).
Thinking about it and remembering what the local boffin had talked about, I'm suspecting the graphics card isn't up to scratch. The computer is an HP (I didn't get the model number). It's running a Pentium 4 at 3.06 Gig, has 512 Meg of RAM, so it's no slug (but has a tiny hardrive by today's standards).
The graphics card is a 'GeForce 6200SE TurboCache' - sadly that means nothing to me and I was wondering if someone could shed some light on its abilities.
So far, my gf and her son think their new toy is wonderful. They're convinced that they've bought a great machine and did an absolutely wonderful job buying it. My gf is really proud of herself for managing what to her was going to be a very scary exercise. I'm looking at an expensive beast with a big processer that can't play the same game to the same standard as my son's box with a humble celeron (but carefully chosen video card) at half the price.
Apart from some feedback on the card mentioned above, some thoughts on what I do now would be appreciated. So far, I've kept my trap shut but if the computer has struggled with one game (a two year old game - Jedi Academy), I can see it struggling again, especially as the kid is determined to have the latest Need For Speed (apparently a top end game) - and guess who's going to have to 'fix' it. I'm suspecting that a HP isn't going to be cheap to upgrade, and I'm imagining my gf's face as I try to explain that she'll have to spend a few more hundred on top of what she's already paid, not to mention the realisation that she hasn't made such a good buy afterall (this is the bit that hurts me). On the other hand, they've owned the computer for a few days now and I don't know how she'd get on going back to David Jones and telling them she'd like a refund because the computer isn't good enough.
Sadly, telling the spoilt brat to pull his head in because his dodgy computer is the result of him nagging his mother into an impulse buy isn't going to work either, nor be understood, though it is what happened :(
Help? This is one of those cases where I'm damned whatever I do.
Richard