<p>FallGirl, I hope your dad is okay…</p>
<p>Just got another call from Mom. Dad is going home, he is not in immediate danger, but surgery planned for the fall will be moved up and no traveling for now.
Thanks, Deja.</p>
<h1>theorymom, my husband has built computers for years, including a blazing fast gaming PC and a multimedia PC. I guarantee you the parts/components didn’t come anywhere near the price tag your son is talking about.</h1>
<p>A brand-name, top-of-the-line Alienware gaming PC–one of THE names in gaming PCs–overclocked & with Vista 64-bit & expensive gaming network card–retails for prices starting at $3500. That’s retail, and their most expensive model. Their flagship middle-of-the-line model, still a very solid gaming rig, sells for about $1600. A comparable computer could be homebuilt by a savvy geek for much less than those prices.</p>
<p>I’m sure your son is good with computers, but the numbers he’s quoting seem out of line compared to the current market.</p>
<p>Hey CBBBlinker, I was at that Advising Day session also! I was sitting a few rows in front of you. When you said that he really needs a bomb to wake him up, I wanted to tell you about my son’s new alarm clock: the Sonic Bomb. It has been a life changer for our whole family. He used to sleep through and/or snooze his excruciatingly loud alarm clock for hours. It was extremely stressful for the entire family. I can’t tell you how often I started the day with a headache because of the never-ending ear-piercing alarm.</p>
<p>I had been very concerned about how this would work in college. I figured that everyone on his hall would hate him (and his bloody alarm clock) within days of his arrival. Then I saw a reference to a vibrating alarm clock, it seemed worth a try. I got it for him a few months ago. He loves it. Not only does he get up on time on his own (previously unheard of), he has discovered that he actually likes to get up early, to have some free time before school. Wow, what a concept.</p>
<p>He has the clock set up across the room. I got him the Sonic Bomb with the extra large display (so he can read it without glasses), and an extension cord for the vibrating pod. The alarm clock can be set to “vibrate”, “alarm”, or “both”. He has his just set to “vibrate”. The volume of the “alarm” mode can be set to a very high decibel (I think the original target audience for this clock was the hearing-impaired).</p>
<p>Wow, #theorymom, I am once again impressed by your wisdom: “I told him it is not the asking (or the not asking) for things that makes the impression, it is what one GIVES. When one gives, others feel like giving. I then told him how little he contributes to our household…”</p>
<p>I will have a similar conversation with my son in the near future.</p>
<h1>tm, are you/he aware that you can upgrade from Vista home edition to ultimate (32-bit) at WPI for $10? He certainly sounds knowledgeable enough to handle the upgrade.</h1>
<h1>TM, our S came in with specs for a laptop priced close to the one your S is fantasizing about. DH is CIO for a national firm, so he had his dept. price out an IBM Lenova laptop, pretty loaded but NOT spec’d for games, and it’s under $1500. No way we’re paying for a gaming laptop when S is at college…I agree with other posters, all he NEEDS is what WPI specs out, anything else is a gift, but I’d prefer gaming to be slow and painful for S once he’s at school!</h1>
<p>Graduation tonight - I think yesterday was the hardest, went to his S and saw the obvious affection among all the teachers and kids. It was their last day at school, and dozens of kids were still hanging around an hour after the final bell. It’s been such a great experience for them, one I wish all kids could experience, a small, nuturing environment.</p>
<p>5k does seem like a lot. My older son, the computer geek, decided to bring both his existing desktop to school (better for games) and then we bought him a new laptop as graduation present. Can’t remember the exact amount, but my recollection is that we gave him $1500 and he upgraded it a bit with his own money, I’m pretty sure total was under $2000. I can tell you that he ended up with a lenovo T61 IBM Thinkpad, because it’s now my laptop. After a year and half he decided he wanted a better laptop, and since he earns lots of money in the summer he can afford to do it himself. (I did give him $500 to buy his old laptop from him.) He says he probably won’t bring the desktop back to school next year, as he finds that he either uses his own laptop or one of the many, many computers available on campus. He’s at Carnegie Mellon and his life seems to revolve around hanging out at the Linux cluster as opposed to his dorm room. </p>
<p>I agree with geek_mom that 8 years is too long a window. I think our house desktop is 8 years old, upgraded many times, and I am ready to trash it and the most memory intensive thing I run is an ancient edition of photoshop. It runs like molasses. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find a good meeting point for the computer. There are plenty of us that don’t have new cars for their graduating kids in their budgets. :eek:</p>
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<p>Glad that’s not the custom here. Around here, the gift of a car for graduation is reserved for guilty non-custodial parents who have not been a part of their child’s life.</p>
<p>In 7-8 years, he may not even be able to buy a battery for that laptop (by the way, Dell batteries are notoriously crappy and overpriced, with few third-party alternatives – he’ll have gone through a few by then).</p>
<p>If computers hadn’t been my profession for over 20 years, I might be inclined to believe a “very knowledgeable” kid who says he needs a wildly souped-up laptop for his game programming cousework and wil get 8 years of that sort of use out of it with occasional user upgrades. It just ain’t so. Has he worked on a laptop before? It’s unlikely he’ll be swapping out video cards and such as he’s ued to doing on his desktop. About all that most people can upgrade on a laptop are disk and RAM, and at that price I’ll bet you he’s already maxed out the RAM and added the biggest disk that’s available today.</p>
<p>Students get smoking deals on software and OS at many universities; he may cut corners there. If RAM accounts for over 10% of the price, he should back off on that; the price will drop dramatically (even accounting for the need to replace DIMMs completely) and it’s a mind-blowingly simple upgrade.</p>
<p>But really, I imagine that the biggest appeal of this dream machine is not lasting power so much as “mine’s bigger” on campus and a lack of personal skin in the game. My kiddo had no trouble at all completing his Comp Sci projects and his papers and presentations on his $1.1k laptop (which we got from Fry’s Electronics for $700) and is now thrilled at its performance in standalone and MMO games (which he got to install /after/ his senior project was turned in). It’s much faster than the high-powered, upgraded gaming desktop he’s had for 3-4 years. This laptop will last him a year or two at Mudd; then he’ll replace it with the newer, better, cheaper hardware that will be on the market at that time. Which will be under a manufacturer’s warranty, provided he doesn’t void it. I’d rather spend $5k on three or four new computers over time than all at once on a computer that will be (functional but) outdated in a few years and then try to make it last five more after that. (OT, as to cars: geek_son is also thrilled that he’ll be driving my old (safe!) SUV with 85k miles on it when he moves into his dorm – peers’ enviro-scorn notwithstanding)</p>
<p>I’ll stop harping now… didn’t mean to go on so long. Just sayin.</p>
<p>Okay, geek_mom, now that you’ve established yourself as an expert, what would you advise the clueless freshman and his parents to buy? Psychology major, the normal general studies math and science requirements, nothing advanced. Laptop.</p>
<p>Ughhhh…I have also been researching what laptop to get D2. I do not like the Dell batteries but I do like their 4 year protection plan where they come to the dorm room to fix computer if there are problems. This has been wonderful for D1 who is NOT a computer person. D2 likes Mac but I think they are overpriced for what you can get from Dell and other brands. I am so torn as to what to get!</p>
<p>When it comes to computers, I just want something that will last 4 years at college. Older D’s computer lasted 3 years before some major fail that required replacement. UGH! And right after the warranty people had called to offer a 4th year of the warranty. It’s like there was a computer bomb in her laptop and as soon as I refused the 4th year of the warranty, they detonated it from afar.</p>
<p>D has every electronic gadget known to teenage girlhood, except for one–she wanted an iPhone for her graduation gift. I have no problem with buying her an iPhone, but there is no way I’m springing for that much in monthly charges! Get your own, honey…</p>
<p>We ended up giving her a check.</p>
<p>I switched to MACs about five years ago and have never had any issues with any of them that couldn’t be solved by dropping it off at an Apple store for a day or two. Not sure how that will work at a “middle of nowhere” college, but I honestly didn’t think we’d be buying anything but a MAC. He already has an IPhone (Christmas) and has been using the MAC all the way through HS. He is a regular major (science or humanities) and so I can’t imagine he’d need any of the gaming stuff others talk about. Of course, I imagine he’ll be taking the XBox unless his roommate has something better.</p>
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Ouch, I guess I asked for that. :o Sorry if I went overboard.</p>
<p>I agree, a Psych undergrad isn’t going to need fancy. Just don’t get him a netbook; it’ll be too small for guy-sized hands to use comfortably on long term papers. Here’s how I would approach it.</p>
<p>First, check his college bookstore’s Web site. The college may partner with certain manufacturers on certain computers, which may or may not be a good deal to the student (ours are not, although they’re marketed as such). But take note of the specs that will be important for a Psych major – operating system (probably Vista), RAM (probably 2GB), hard disk (probably somewhere between 160GB and 300GB), wi-fi (probably built-in, 802.11a/b/g). You’ll probably buy the hardware outside, but it’ll probably be worth it to buy the software (e.g., Office and possibly a Windows upgrade) from the bookstore. Don’t buy Office bundled on the computer; the Student Edition is typically much less expensive.</p>
<p>Next, spend a few minutes on the college IT department’s Web site. Look for campus computing standards, recommended minimum specifications (the minimum spec will be painful, don’t count on buying that), anything about specific supported or unsupported models. Some colleges have computer repair shops onsite, so it can be useful to have a supported model in that case.</p>
<p>Next, take him to your local computer superstore – CompUSA, Fry’s, whatever – and have him spend some time looking at screens and tapping on keyboards. The screen is partially a weight trade-off; remind him that he’ll occasionally be staring at it in the dark for hours at a time. And a full-size keyboard is pretty important for most guys! Find out what appeals to him and what doesn’t. Same with the mouse – does a pointer stick make him crazy, does he like or hate the trackpad? At this point, you may find a particular system that appeals to him and matches the specs you determined earlier. It’ll probably be somewhere between $600 and $1200. You may be done. If not, you’re now informed enough to go check the Web sites of the college’s recommended manufacturers.</p>
<p>Dell is a common, widely supported brand (maybe even more so in Texas schools?). HP has had a bad rap in the past, but has become a reliable brand. I don’t buy Thinkpad/Lenovo anymore since they’re Chinese-made and my network credentials can be sensitive – but they’ve been good in the past. I tend to stick with Intel processors. I’d look for something well over 2GHz myself. Dual core makes a big performance difference, which is useful for Vista and the next OS. Quad core is faster still, but would be overkill for someone who’s not crunching tons of numbers or doing something else very CPU-intensive.</p>
<p>If you go with Dell, spec out the same computer on their small business site; in my experience, that’s often cheaper than the academic co-branded site. My experience also says not to max out the RAM – go with what you need today (again, I’d say 2GB is plenty for the type of use you describe, and half that would be adequate if he had XP instead of Vista) and plan on upgrading within six months to a year. Don’t buy the upgrade RAM from Dell; take a look at crucial.com, which sells good (sometimes better) RAM for much less. Count on buying a new battery for ~ $200 about two years from now.</p>
<p>I’ve ignored the possibility that his department favors Apple. Apple systems are good in my experience, but more expensive – and the answer in that case is just to go to the Apple store and ask an expert there.</p>
<p>Whatever you buy, consider spending a little extra money on an external hard drive and getting him to back up religiously. Drives do fail, and it really stinks to lose a 10-page paper you’ve been working on for weeks. Also, if you have the choice, don’t buy it the week before he moves… buy it now so he’ll have time to get used to it before he needs to use it there.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Oh I am sure you are correct geek_mom, as H is inclined with you and was also in the industry for 20 years - although is not up on everything new right now and so needs to research before he will come up with an alternative.</p>
<p>I will print out all your suggestions to help DH aim his research. I am personally bowing out of the equation, having spent until 1 this morning mired in computer websites and reviews and not getting one iota closer to understanding what goes where and why.</p>
<p>I do however know enough to be skeptical of a teenage boy’s wish list for the ultimate machine.</p>
<p>He claims notebooks are not upgradeable like desktops so he needs to frontload (he needs to go into mutual fund management!) We need to dissuade him of this notion with examples of lower functioning machines that can be upgraded if necessary with his own money or with Christmas presents or something.</p>
<p>His dream machine (now down to 4K) is much too big a mouthful to chew and I just don’t swallow the very well thought out counterarguments he had at the ready.</p>
<p>Yes an external hard drive will be in the plan, and some peripherals (headset, printer, cables) that are, depending on where you go, either a la cart or come with.</p>
<p>FWIW, he plans to treat it as a desktop. He will lock it to his desk in his room. He has a small notebook that is lightweight and can travel in his back-pack. It is a tiny thing and does not have any capability for his programming courses or the game design end of things. (or game playing for that matter) </p>
<p>My thought is, he can be and should be working in the labs, not in his room, so I am jonesing for no new computer at all until he spends the fall terms there and he gets a decent idea of what he really needs (not wants). He really had it in his head that this was going to be his reward for graduating. Welcome to the real world kiddo.</p>
<p>Thanks, geek_mom! We need to buy a car for D…I’m at research overload on that, so I can’t get my head around computers at the same time.</p>
<p>Anyone that can send me websites IM please do - re fast computers at decent prices</p>
<p>He is going through Dell because they offer a discount - but I told him to check other vendors - because the price may be cheaper for the same basic machine even without the discount. </p>
<p>He has not researched the buying/pricing - he has no clue how to price shop. He just went to the Dell site and built it there (yes Alienware) with no regard for pricing.</p>
<p>he just wants the latest and greatest. That is all it is. But it needs to be a laptop - which raises the price of things.</p>
<p>Never fear, we are not near to be being convinced by his arguments or to caving in. The challenge is getting him to willingly accept our arguments over his own.</p>
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<p>Yes, Dell is very close. Seems like they ought to have a factory store or something.</p>
<p>oh and it looks like he needs the 64 bit - so not sure that is something he can upgrade to for $10. _ though I am going to research that a bit_ not sure why 64 bit is a <em>need</em> or just a suggestion by the school.</p>