On Sat, 21 Jun 2008, Caleb Sawtell wrote:
Thats all well and good but this person is wanting a computer for keeping
track of memberships and newsletters not for keeping huge video files.
Er, well, maybe.
People have asked me in the past, questions along the line of,
"All i want is a computer to do mail and browse and print out the odd
page, what should I get ?"
So you run around with them and set them up a machine (linux of course)
which is second hand with a small drive etc etc. And then you discover
that their desired feature list was a bit longer:
*want to be able to play those infernal win98se games on CD
*want to be able to play and store video
*want to be able to store all the digital images from their camera, which
is 8mega pixel and only ever works at max resolution and is used
extensively, capturing both video and stills.
*want to be able to play all dvds from the dvd shop
*want to be able to browse to every web site under the sun, which
*want to do video games with accelerated graphics
*and the list goes on and on.
And that little machine you set up for them (which met the original
requirements) is, of course, not up to the job.
---So my preference on hearing someone's "spec" is to always go big.
Further, cause I don't really want to do lots of support work, I tend to
suggest reliable systems... Which is driving me away from the cheap second
hand things..
Then you look at the price of an expensive second hand
machine, you notice the price is not a lot less than the brand new
price... The question comes up, "So why buy a cheap second hand machine".
Note that my whole comment is based on the premise that the spec supplied
by people as to what they want is invariably much less than what they
actually want.
Derek.
--
Derek Smithies Ph.D.
IndraNet Technologies Ltd.
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph +64 3 365 6485
Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
