f13.net forums - Techno-Fork in the Road

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
July 20, 2025, 03:28:47 PM

we're back, baby

For a long time, our basic media technological upgrade path in our house has been pretty set. We're on our third "house" laptop, mostly used by my wife. I've had a PC desktop that's used heavily for gaming. The current aging P4 is the fourth PC desktop we've owned over the years, I typically get about four years out of them before an upgrade becomes necessary. I do also do writing and work from home on the desktop--we need two computers at least for the two of us for work from home. The last desktop went to my young daughter, and I'll do the same with this one when I'm not using it. Cable modem + wireless. Nice HDTV. We've had a PS2 and a Gamecube for a while, though I don't do so much gaming on those. Now we have a Wii as well. But the consoles are mostly so I can play enough to write and think about console gaming, and for the occasional exclusive that I really, really want to play. (God of War or Katamari Damacy, for example). This has seemed to me to be a very stable technological set-up for us, and generally within our budget, as long as my wife doesn't pay too much attention to the total $$$$ I'm dumping into gaming. :) We have two DS also, that my daughter and I play on.

But now I'm getting a bit confused about the next upgrade path, which is imminent. The desktop is showing a lot of signs of age, not just in terms of things that won't run on it. The hard drive is close to full as well. My daughter wants to play games that won't run on her truly ancient desktop, which was my previous one before the P4. I want to play Bioshock and some other upcoming titles, and I think my PC will probably choke on them if it can run them at all.

I'm tired of chasing the upgrade cycle for PCs, and dealing with designers who seem to feel it's a sacred obligation to make games that won't run on the majority of existing PCs. Consoles don't really have that problem.

But. Our productivity needs are also important. Both my wife and I do a lot of work from home. I do a significant amount of digital photography and need a good quality machine for that. Increasingly when I go to academic meetings and other conferences, I want a laptop of my own, and the house laptop is also really old.

So I'm trying to decide:

1. Move over the P4 to my daughter and let her play Zoo Tycoon 2, Toontown, etc. to her heart's content without having to wait for when daddy isn't on his computer. Buy a good if not quite bleeding-edge PC for me. Wait for the laptop to break, stick to one laptop in the household. Don't buy an XBox 360 or PS3 yet.

2. Move over the P4 to my 6-yr old daughter. Get me a good gaming-friendly laptop that I can also use for all my home productivity needs. Primarily play MMOGs and the few other PC exclusives that I must have on that. Get a XBox 360 for all other gaming. Go without a desktop at home, at all.

3. Move over the P4 to my daughter. Buy a cheapish ($600-700) current desktop that can handle all my writing, online work and photography but that's not really going to cut it for any newer games. Move most of my gaming over to next-gen consoles, get one of them, probably the XBox 360. Skip the laptop for now. I think this could be hard for me since my academic interests and personal fun in gaming focus on MMOGs and that's going to stay PC-centric for a while.

All of that challenges our current budgetary wiggle room but I think I can swing it. I'm kind of tempted by the thought of really stretching things and doing option 3 with a laptop as well, but I kind of say to myself, "Why"?

These scenarios also assume that: a) The P4 will work for my daughter for a while yet and b) my wife's laptop will survive for a while. (She doesn't use it for anything besides writing and reading online).

If I go laptop-for-desktop, I'm also concerned about whether I can get (or afford) a rig that will really cut it for any and all gaming needs. If I could, #2 is a kind of appealing option--it solves the need for a laptop and for a PC upgrade and maybe leaves room for the console as well.

Anyway you slice it, Khaldun's daughter gets a P4!

When I was six, we had a TI-99/4a and it was the friggin bomb.

Yeah, she's doing great out of this no matter what. Anything to corrupt the young, as far as I'm concerned. But actually we do a goodly amount of playing together--she's really game and computer savvy, which is fun for both of us.

I would go with option 2. As this gets you a 360 to do the majority of your gaming on, and a decent laptop to work/MMOG on. You will pay more for a laptop that could run new FPS games and high end, but I think you can get about 80% to 90% of FPS on 360 nowadays anyway.

If you get a powerful enough laptop, just hook it up to your monitor and a keyboard, and you wont really notice the difference from a new desktop.

I think the one thing that you didn't say. Are you comfertable playing most of your FPS games on a console with a controller?

FPS, yes, I can get used to it, much as WASD is like walking and breathing for me.

Quote from: Morfiend on September 12, 2007, 11:51:14 AM

I agree with the caveat that he get a desktop instead of a laptop. If I had any say I'd say have it built on the cheap, possibly by a friend. Laptops are nice but you can't do much upgrading on them. On the other hand, with a desktop, you can upgrade it to your heart's content IF it's not a namebrand. (ie, built from the ground up).

Game friendly laptop ~ 1100 bucks? A game friendly pc is also about 1100 bucks, if you build it yourself (there are a couple of threads already outlining a solid system in that range). If you are willing to put the effort in to do upgrades to the PC hardware incrementally then there is no reason you cannot maintain your PC at game friendly levels for ~200 bucks per year (alternating major upgrades to whatever is the current bottleneck) indefinitely.

You can, with a little effort give the kid the p4, get a new, pretty damn good home pc AND and an xbox 360 (or decent cheap laptop) for about the same price as you are proposing AND keep the pc at gamer levels for the future while cutting your upgrade costs enough to keep with whatever gen the consoles are at.

just sayin.

Quote from: Grand Design on September 12, 2007, 11:39:40 AM

Anyway you slice it, Khaldun's daughter gets a P4!

When I was six, we had a TI-99/4a and it was the friggin bomb.

When I was six we had a. um.... Oh yeah. We had Disco.

Burn baby burn.

Yeah, I've done some upgrades to my current PC, which is a Dell, something I kind of regret in that there are constraints on what you can do to it down the road because of some of the components Dell uses. I'm fine with memory upgrades, video card upgrades, and so on...I start to get a bit unnerved by more sophisticated monkeying-around with overclocking, complex upgrades and/or building my own, though there's no reason why I should. Just phobic, I guess. I'm considering a build-my-own approach to a new desktop, but not without a bit of trepidation. There is one part of me that would rather pay for small, easy upgrades to some components but then just go ahead and make a complete upgrade once in a while.

The part about upgrades that's starting to bug me is more the habit of a lot of PC designers to push beyond what most current users have plus having to spend lots of time tweaking performance, trying to figure out what needs fixing, etc. There's something really appealing about consoles in that sense: it's freedom from having to read system requirements, monkeying with components, chasing down drivers.

I think I'm one of those computer users who is very uncomfortably perched between the people who know nothing about how their computers work and those who are completely 100% comfortable with every aspect of their machines. So the folks in my life who don't know anything want me to come and help them with stuff and the folks in my life who know everything wonder why I don't want to do stuff that seems like second nature to them.

What are the specs on your P4 and laptop? What's your budget like? Would you need a new monitor(s) or is the one you have fine?

Quote from: Khaldun on September 12, 2007, 02:43:14 PM

Do a bit of reading on the subject of building a computer (I found http://shsc.info/ShscWiki to be quite useful), make a wishlist and show it to some people who know what they're talking about, and take the plunge of building. you might spend a night or three fighting the system but in the end you'll save a lot of money and end up with a system you can upgrade more easily or cannibalise for parts later, for less than an equivalent prebuilt machine. There are a lot of people here that can help you out too.

Well, I would have said get a "build it yourself" desktop, but he seemed much more inclined to want a laptop for work and travel. I havea pretty badass PC at home that is my gaming rig, and I have a 17inch apple laptop that is my work computer. It IS nice having a laptop to have all your work crap on. Honestly, though, out of the 3(desktop, laptop, 360), if I just HAD to get rid of one of them, it would probably be the desktop PC. I can play about 80 to 90 % of the games on my 360, and I can play WoW on my laptop. Not that I would in anyway want to mind you. I love my desktop. I was just thinking of in a one or the other type situation.

Also, like I said, if you are willing to spend a little more, a laptop can also fill the position of a decent desktop PC.

Or shop around and find a place that'll assemble your choice of componenets for $50. cool

I assembled my current PC from scratch and if I could do it then I'm pretty sure you could too. However, the amount of time I spent researching, planning and actually getting it all built wasn't a great time investment. Technology has moved on and everything I learnt is now out of date and useless for my next upgrade. Next time I'll order the components and have them to the assembly/install.

The laptop for travel piece really is becoming important--I've been at instructional technology/cyberculture meetings now more and more in the last few years where I've really been frustrated at not having a good-quality laptop that's dedicated to my own work (and gaming) to bring with me. Even if I were to build a desktop gaming machine for myself, I'm still going to be jonesing after a laptop. Plus by next year, I'm expecting to be doing a major new research project where I'll be in archives a lot, so that pretty much requires a laptop, though it doesn't have to be much more than a note-taking, writing, online browsing machine.

Oh, specs. It's a P4 2.66ghz, 1gig RAM. Video card was a Radeon that died about six months ago, I replaced it with an el cheapo nVidiia GeForce 6200. I could upgrade that, I suppose, but I'm reluctant to spend much if I'm considering an upgrade--kind of the calculation about repairs you start to employ with a car that's over 100,000 miles.

Still need budget and whether or not you want to get a new monitor.

Budget: ideally no more than 1,300 for a desktop, laptop I know I'll have to go higher if I do that. I can keep using the monitor I have now for a desktop though it also is showing its age plus it's just not that great a monitor.

Sounds to me you have to decide if you want a decent, non-gaming laptop or a decent gaming desktop. Unless you're willing to spend about 2-4k on the laptop, its just not gonna run something like Bioshock.

If you're going for a desktop, I'd wait till about mid November or so, when things will start to shake out on the new CPUs from Intel. You might be able to get yourself a more than adequate C2D desktop -and- a bare bones laptop for simple travel needs, assuming you're willing to buy all the parts and cost cut a lot on particular components, such as the case, the memory type and making sure not to get the ubertopknotch video card, but settle for a middlin one that you can later swap out when finances permit.

If you aren't particular about the laptop and you don't care about gaming on the laptop if you have a desktop machine to game on my suggestion is to spend ~$1600 ($800 x 2) and get a new desktop and a new laptop (but no new monitor for now). That way you and your wife both can have new machines and you can take the new laptop with you when you travel. If you want a laptop that people will ooh and aah over and play games on it you'll have to forgo the new desktop.

For the laptop, I can go into the low 2k neighborhood if I do that exclusively (w/a near-term XBox purchase to follow)--my mom's indicated a willingness to chip in a bit for a laptop, plus my wife recognizes that a game-capable laptop costs more, so if I decide to go down that road for my main machine, I think we can reach budgetary harmony. That's why these choices aren't all entirely equal.

In that case, I might suggest a good laptop. I don't like laptops but I'm weird, apparently. My wife has a Dell XPS that works great, which might be outside the budget but they definitely make game-worthy laptops. Her XPS was better than my tower before I upgraded it last January/February, and it was just one of the black (second-tier) ones. In my house, my tower is the only non-laptop computer.

Quote from: Khaldun on September 13, 2007, 08:27:26 AM

Well jeez if you budget is $2K+ you can get a game playing laptop *and* a game playing desktop. E.g. this 5 lb ASUS is only $1200:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220175&Tpk=A8SC