Computer Testing

[Computer_Newbie]

When you do Computer Testing can I ask for you to test specific games, like Civ 5 or Empire: Total War?

[PCC-William]

Unfortunately we don't have access to every game out there, so we can't really run just any game. We use a few titles in our testing already: Dirt2, X3, and maybe a couple of others... and as long as those run fine I can't imagine any reason other games wouldn't (unless they have some known bug or compatibility problem).

Was there something specific with those games you were concerned about?

[Computer_Newbie]

Nothing really. I just wanted to make sure that they worked on the computer. I tend to have some really bad luck with games lately. Half the games I own don't work for some reason and I don't have the slightest idea what they are.

[PCC-William]

Hmm, well you might consider posting about some of the issues you've had on our forums - to see if anyone has ideas. I've not heard of anyone having problems with games like those on new system from us, though, and I know several customers who were specifically into strategy games like those.

[Computer_Newbie]

No, no, no, I've never got a computer from you guys before, in fact, I've never heard of you guys until last weekend. The computer I have is a Gateway from Tiger Direct.com from two years ago. heh heh, that's a complicated story in itself. Me and my sister both got computers, both exactly the the same computer model, I took the top one of the stack. I took it up to my room and hooked it up. It started up just fine. Then I tried opening the DVD-ROM. It no work! Damn, Damn, Double Damn! Told my dad and next day we sent it back. To add insult to injury, my sister's computer worked. To say my anger was palpable would be an understatement. Well, a few weeks later, a new computer comes in. Thinking my troubles are finally behind me, I take it up stairs to hook it up. I press the power button. A few beeps and a few boops and it gets to the Gateway logo... then shuts off. It shuts the F@#$ off. To say that I had the anger of a thousand suns would be the understatement of the Human Race. So I was out for Tiger's blood(heh heh Charley Sheen heh heh). So it went back. By that time we had gone through 2 computers and 2 complete failures. Well we decided to give up on Tiger Direct. Luckily my sister had left for certain reasons and she left her computer. It became mine. A month later I received a copy of Age of Empires 3. I needed to install a patch so I installed. From then on my computer was very unreliable and my unlucky streak with games.

[PCC-William]

Wow, I'm sorry to hear about the problems you had. Out of curiosity, did you try to contact Tiger / Gateway at all when the first system wouldn't work? That may have been a really simple issue - a loose power plug on the DVD drive, or at worst a defective drive. Probably could have been fixed a lot easier and faster than a whole new computer.

[Computer_Newbie]

Not that I'm aware of. My parents were calling the shots and what they say goes. Oh and for a little side note: There have been times when I just wanted to chuck my current comp out my second story window, burn it then beat it senselessly with a baseball bat then package it back up and send back to Tiger Direct with a message that they're next(Godfather style). Good thing good taste prevailed... I have some issues, don't I? Hopefully, I'll never have to have those dark thoughts ever again. Seriously, usually I a good natured person. Those were some dark times in my computer experience...

[PCC-William]

Well, I hope whatever system you get next - from Puget or not - works well right out of the box for you

[Computer_Newbie]

Oh, I'll definitely will be buying Puget. Last night I had a nice chat with one your customer service reps and that completely sold me. It was like they read my mind. I never said what budget I needed to stick to and he got within $150 of the budget(he was over). The other thing that sucked me in was the Anti-RAID(I know he's not against RAID per se just in general) article by Jon. I finally figured out what was wrong with my Gateway. The BSOD has been caused by RAID Array Degradation. Can the Degradation be caused by a virus? My theory is that the patch for AoE3 had a virus, that infected my computer, had it's way with RAID Controller thus causing the RAID Array to degrade. Of course we'll never know for sure, but based on my limited computer knowledge it does fit a fair amount of logic. From my limited knowledge viruses tend to just cause general chaos and damages anything it touches. Talking about my limited computer knowledge, My knowledgeability of Computer parts, whilst, still woefully incomplete, has grown a fair amount in the last week, due to all of the Computer info scattered on this site. To that end, I suggest that you guys create a centralized location of information of computer parts and how they interact. With something like that I could learn more about computers in a day than I've learned in a week.

[PCC-William]

I'm not quite sure if this is what you are looking for, but we have some good articles on computer hardware and what goes into selecting the right parts (some of these may be a little out of date in terms of specific recommendations, but the ideas are still accurate):

http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=26

http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=65