Email question woes.

[Seshat]

First, it has a LOW-END video card. Getting any graphically intensive game to play will be a challenge. The customer said onboard video but that is clearly not the case.

And if the salesman was told he wanted it to play games, and if he took the salesman's advice (yeah, both big IFs, but still), he shouldn't have been sold that computer to start with.

Yes, I will agree that the power supply is weak for the type of CPU. But how is most salespeople supposed to know that and for that matter most consumers? This customer thought this computer would meet his needs when he looked at the spec tag.

To me, the store is not at fault really for selling a computer with a weak power supply. If the store decided to make a house brand computer I would say OK but Gateway was the one that made the computer, not the store.

The buyer should have blocked the store from purchasing those computers for sale with that kit. Whether you deem it to be salesman's job to know such things or not, it's the responsibility of the store to sell products which are fit for purpose.

That's enshrined in law in Australia - if it's not fit for the purpose for which it is sold, the shop must make appropriate restitution. The shop may themselves turn to the manufacturer for assistance with that restitution, but it's the shop's responsibility to do that, not the customer's.

And I agree with Broomjockey and Pedersen: if we computer geeks as an industry make a habit of selling product which is not fit for purpose, and blaming the customer for it, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

[sms001]

If I was sure the actual facts in this situation were as they were presented, I'd have to say:

Determine SC's actual needs. Get a list of their games, find out which is heaviest on machines, use those specs as base.

Allow customer original purchase price of the machine toward new machine.

Shop eats depreciation and obsolescence on old machine, customer eats misery and suffering of two years without games, nobody's happy. Seems fair.

But back to my first sentence. After being here for while, a far more likely scenario seems to be that customer came in with request for a game rig and then balked at the price and was shown lesser models which suited him better price wise. But is convinced in that particular strain of SC logic that they went in, got what they wanted, got a deal, and now it's the stores fault.......

SC: Is there any way to get my data back after the service center formatted my computer?
Another tech responded back, saying once it's formatted that's it for the data, it's gone.
no guarantee you'll get your data back, especially after a format.

I was kinda wondering about this one Sld. Does the service center do some military spec wipe as well as formatting? Because it's been my experience that the usual format is about the easiest data recovery operation. Deleted and overwritten (by use) or actual physical hd damage are tough, but there are a whole slew of format recovery utilities. Just curious.

[Skrae]

Going back to the car analogy, when buying a car, a responsible buyer will do some research to see how it will perform regarding mileage, how the company is doing (will they be around for me to use my warranty when something breaks?), what kind of gas it uses, will it meet the customer's needs, what is the quality of this company's cars? Questions like that.

So using the car analogy to excuse the customer from doing any sort of research doesn't work here, they may not know exactly what everything means, which is excusable, but they should still do their homework.

Now, in my opinion, this computer wasn't a good gaming computer two years ago, my computer was bought three years ago and it has higher specs, which leads me to believe the user wanted something he could game on, but didn't want to spend a lot. Now, I have no idea what went on in the store, but giving the salesman the benefit of the doubt, this is similar to what I think probably went on.

C: Customer
S: Salesperson

C: I'd like a computer that I can game on, but I don't really want to spend alot.
S: Ok, well, we've got this, you can get away with it for now, but in the future you're probably looking at some upgrades.
C: That's good enough and it's in my price range.

I will say that this is an ideal conversation with little suck on both ends at time of purchase.

And as for saying the store is at fault for selling inferior products, keep in mind that it's a bit more financially feasible to sell prebuilt computers, and the store has no say whatsoever what goes into them. I do agree that someone should be held accountable for the inferior product, but I don't think that it's the store that should be, it's the manufacturer. If the brakes fail in your brand new car, who is the proper person to sue, the manufacturer, or the dealer?

[Samaliel]

Well, if the dealer happens to know that the manufacturer has been getting a reputation for a pretty high record of brake failures soon after the sale, I would say that the dealer have quite a responsibility in the situation...

Of course, in a chain store, the inertia can be pretty dreadful and you'll have managers trying to pressure the sales persons to get rid of the soon to be discontinued pieces of crap. In these circumstances while the sales persons may or may not be to blame, the store, however, definitely have a responsibility.

[otakuneko]

Even for two years ago, that's not a gaming rig. Workhorse maybe, but that video card is junk. It sort of resembles the way my current main computer is set up (cheaped out on the video). I'm not quite sure how to make an infamous car analogy out of it. Maybe something like a Ford Super Duty vs a Corvette. Sure you can race your truck, and you'll probably beat the average four-banger -- but you'll lose against a sports car. Similarly you CAN game on a workstation such as what that Gateway appears to be--but not as well as you could on a system designed for that purpose, even if that system had a smaller engine, so to speak.

Even given that Intel CPUs are more energy efficient than say, AMD, I'm kinda surprised that system even boots with a 300W PSU. I have a far-lesser (single core system, AGP video card) box in the living room that won't so much as power on without a 350.

[Hyndis]

Never skimp on the PSU. Sure, sure, you might be able to have a decent current gaming rig that works on a 600w PSU. Barely. The PSU is going to be running at full load the entire time, and this means more heat. The hotter it gets the less efficient it is and shorter lifespan it has.

Generally onboard video is worthless for playing any sort of game that requires decent graphics. Its just fine for a work machine, but its horrid for gaming. The upside is that onboard video is cheap and doesn't consume much power. Again, perfect for a work machine.

Is this a GPU he installed later? If so, thats his own fault. I frequently get people who go from onboard video to two monster video cards, run them in SLI/Crossfire mode...and then complain their machine won't boot!

Person has a 450ish watt PSU. Each card requires about 400w by itself. No way he's going to run both cards and the rest of the computer on a bargain bin PSU!

Of course they bitch and whine about it, but I point out how the math works, and then even the densest of customers will understand that they also need to buy a proper PSU for a gaming rig.

[ExiledV20]

1

Never skimp on the PSU. Sure, sure, you might be able to have a decent current gaming rig that works on a 600w PSU. Barely. The PSU is going to be running at full load the entire time, and this means more heat. The hotter it gets the less efficient it is and shorter lifespan it has.

Now, I really have to disagree with you on this. On my home-built system, I'm running a 500W PSU. Important internals are Core 2 Duo 3.0, 4GB RAM, ATI HD3870. PSU does not run at full load, does not overheat. Somehow, I also seem to run rings around the SLI rigs with their quad-cores when it comes to games, but that's another story*. What I have is a decent gaming rig that so far has been able to function at max with any game I throw at it.

Of course, I'm also conversant enough to a) build a proper cooling system into the case b) track out exactly what I'll be using the machine for, and c) use the handy power calculator at the following: http://www.antec.outervision.com/

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* If you play EQ2 and pump it up, the game still relies on the Ghz of a single CPU since the multi-processor function is well and truly borked. The graphics will also rely on the CPU as opposed to the GPU and graphics memory. Quads tend to have a lower speed than dual-cores; thus the disadvantage at running EQ2. Gotta love it.