Despite a few years in technology journalism, and about, what?, 40 hardware reviews to my credit, my main interest nowadays in things non-internet is that it works. Things stopped working today and these are the three things I bought from PC World — my first visit in four years — and the story behind them.
Unexpectedly, perhaps — credit is due to the guys and girls at the branch (Fulham). They were really nice. I’ve experienced crap service from PC World in the past, but not this time…
- No one bothered me as I bumbled happily about the shelves.
- They gave my wife (no man asks directions) great directions, took her to the right place, and didn’t try to sell her anything.
- There was no insistence on extra warranties at the checkout!
Back to my purchases:
HP Black Ink Cartridge Model 10: I was really lucky to be gifted an HP Business Inkjet 1000 printer by its product manager at HP UK. The reason he gave it me was because I was sceptical about an inkjet printer as a solution for school classrooms. He was basically challenging me to find fault with the machine. This was about a year-and-a-half ago.
My tests, this much time later, would show that it’s fantastic value for money. This is the first cartridge I’ve had to replace on the machine. That’s a million times (not literally, but emotionally) longer than equivalent machines I’ve had from Epson and Canon. The print quality is easily equivalent to a cheap colour laser, so the running costs must work out loads less.
Is it right for a school or personal business printer? Not for a school, I think — it’s a bit slow compared to the cheap colour lasers you can get nowadays. But, hey, this is a two-year-old printer that I’m still perfectly happy with.
£30 is a bit much for a refill, still.
Elements 250GB External Drive: I needed this because my music is all on my home (Mesh) PC’s hard drive and my PC is three years old. I’ve stopped trusting it. It’s making strange noises. Randomly. I get a message every time I start the machine that one of the chip fans has failed PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE. Every time I press that F1 key, it’s like punching the ‘nudge’ button on a fruit machine. That’s a horrible place to be, and I want to make sure those tunes are still with me when the Mesh passes on to the great landslip in the suburbs.
No idea if the Elements product is any good, but apparently there’s a Western Digital disk inside. There are photos and words and stuff too to be protected.
I will, of course, be moving all of that online before too long, but 70GB+ of music is still one hell of an upload on my BT Internet contract.
These things are surprisingly cheap nowadays — £60 for 250GB of reassurance seems very reasonable.
Nvidia 7300 PNY: Confession time — I love computer games. When I bought this PC, it was ‘rigged out’ with twin 6800 Nvidia GPUs. For those not conversant, the video card manufacturers have come up with a great wheeze to get you to buy two of their products whereby it was alleged that they’d work together to provide superior video performance.
About six months after buying my new machine, it informed me that this wasn’t working. Thanks. I carried on playing my favourite games — Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion and Civ4 — and noticed no difference. SLI — the NVidia version of this dual card technology — was a swizz, I concluded. Didn’t bother phoning in the warranty — what was the point?
Anyway, this morning, I got no display whatsoever. Having tested various bits and pieces, I concluded that one or both of my graphics cards had failed.
So, getting back to PC World, I had the choice between an SLI-ready (two cards, remember) 7600 card at £90 or a cheap-as-chips 7300 card at £60. There were other, very expensive, options. I’ve lost confidence with the whole two-cards-work-as-one concept. My PC is cracking on a bit anyway. There’s an unused Mac Mini in the wings. That extra £30 seemed unnecessary.
PNY? They are a funny company. Big in Europe, as I understand. I remember their marketing manager from a few years ago. Very sharp. Showered editorial guys with free memory cards and spent nothing on advertising. I understand that’s still the case, and that it still works when it comes to publicity.
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SLI works, but only if you play your games with all settings to max, ani x16, AA8x, in glorious 1900x1450 resolution. The cards required for that exceed 400pounds — each. It also implies that you don’t have any bottleneck in your system, such as slow bus, outdated CPU or slowish RAM. Then, and only then, you’ll see SLI in its full glory — that full glory being having spent 400 quids for a second card and getting an extra 30fps on top of your existing 150 :-D
I’m surprised you could even boot Oblivion on a pair of 6800. I have a 7800GT and I’m struggling. 7950′ aren’t priced too badly nowadays… something you might want to look at it if you want to see the Shivering Islands the way they should look :D