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Dec. 24th, 2004 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaOver the last couple of days I visited most of the stores here in town that sell computers. Man, the pickings were slim! It was hard to find anything with a graphics card, or with more than 512MB of memory, and they all cost more than what's available via mail order.
I finally picked up an open box Sony VAIO desktop. Since it's open box it can go back with no restocking fee if he hates it, or if we decide we can get him something a whole lot better for the same price, post-Christmas. But it turned out that open box means "no box" and that it didn't come with any of the customary CDs and manuals and paperwork. I was just too worn down to care anymore, so I accepted it as is.
Also it had this stupid store demo stuff on it, and a lot of things were hosed up or disabled altogether. I spent a couple hours on the phone with Sony support finding out how to restore it to a clean WinXP configuration, downloading and installing patches and driver updates and whatnot, and setting it up so it talks to my laser printer, and burning a ten CD system restore kit. If he decides he wants to keep it, and run XP, he will be all set to go. He can start playing games immediately. Or he can wipe it clean and load some other OS on it if he wants, while preserving the option to bring XP back.
I also got him a game. I considered getting Doom 3, or Half Life 2, since they seem to be the talked-about games this year. But in the end I decided to get Halo, since the computer isn't as spiffy as I had hoped, and it might have been slow with these new games. Also, the computer came with Age of Empires II. Hopefully he will enjoy one or the other of these games.
I finally picked up an open box Sony VAIO desktop. Since it's open box it can go back with no restocking fee if he hates it, or if we decide we can get him something a whole lot better for the same price, post-Christmas. But it turned out that open box means "no box" and that it didn't come with any of the customary CDs and manuals and paperwork. I was just too worn down to care anymore, so I accepted it as is.
Also it had this stupid store demo stuff on it, and a lot of things were hosed up or disabled altogether. I spent a couple hours on the phone with Sony support finding out how to restore it to a clean WinXP configuration, downloading and installing patches and driver updates and whatnot, and setting it up so it talks to my laser printer, and burning a ten CD system restore kit. If he decides he wants to keep it, and run XP, he will be all set to go. He can start playing games immediately. Or he can wipe it clean and load some other OS on it if he wants, while preserving the option to bring XP back.
I also got him a game. I considered getting Doom 3, or Half Life 2, since they seem to be the talked-about games this year. But in the end I decided to get Halo, since the computer isn't as spiffy as I had hoped, and it might have been slow with these new games. Also, the computer came with Age of Empires II. Hopefully he will enjoy one or the other of these games.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-25 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 02:32 pm (UTC)