Interesting Conversations at Microcenter

The Microcenter associates are really good.  They handle weird technical requirements really well.  They are very knowledgeable.  They even try to save you money!  From conversations that I hear, though, it rarely ever works.

When buying/building computers, you can go overboard or you can go pretty modest.  It is my experience that technical people who know what they are doing buy modest, and non-technical people who want to be technical people go overboard.  The person in the "Need For Speed" article was definitely not technical.

In the most recent case, I was waiting for an associate to buy my HP Slate 7.  I had to wait for another customer who wanted a powerful computer.  The associate asked what the customer wanted the computer for, because the computer he was looking at was very pricey.  The associate flat out said he wanted to save the customer money.  The customer wanted to do Word and other applications like that.  So, the associate redirected him to a cheaper computer.  Well, that computer wasn't good enough.  The customer insisted that he needed a more powerful computer.  Finally, he said, "What about my flight simulator?"

In the past, whenever I was helping someone pick out a computer, I was go through the same thing.  If all you do is MS Office and browse the internet, you don't need a powerful computer.  Then they would break out the "but I play games!" answer, which at the time, automatically bumped you up to needing the most powerful computer.  Computers have changed since then.  Computers have increased in power faster than the requirements of most games.  Now, there are some games that definitely need the latest hardware, but lets examine this person's requirement.

There are many flight simulators on the market, but they are usually referred to by name.  When someone says "flight simulator", they are usually referring to Microsoft Flight Simulator.  It is an ok product, but it by no means an X-Plane.  Most flight simulators don't use accurate physics.  They pre-calculate some performance tables.  This means they don't require a lot of power.  On top of that, the last version of Microsoft Flight Simulator came out in 2006!

In the end, the person couldn't make up his mind.  I believe he went over to the other section of the store to build his own computer.