Quote Originally Posted by henners88
Yeah Mark sums it up for me in a brief sentence lol. I appreciate you can get small PC's these days but I prefer an even smaller laptop for surfing the net and editing photographs. My work give me a decent laptop to run SolidWorks too and I bring that home when I need to do extra CAD work.

We use these: Work Station Specialists Laptop Solidworks

I dare say it would run many games as it has a mean graphics card but I don't need it for that type of thing. I sold a desk a few years back that used to have my PC on, and don't want another one. Its good to know PC gaming is still alive and well as its easy to assume consoles are the only form. I just prefer a games unit I can hide away until I need it.
I said I agreed with you and your reasons

To Mark, that doesn't really make sense though? What do you do when you need to buy something that you're not clued up on? Personally I'll find a friend who knows about it, just like someone who doesn't know about cars will take a knowledgeable friend with them to go and have a look at a car. Plus these days you can just go on forums and tap into them for advice.

Like I said, there's this perceived complexity around PC gaming, that it somehow requires more skill than just normally operating a computer. With steam, all you need to do these days is put your username and password in and it'll automatically install your games for you. I went back to Perth last December, I fancied a game so I downloaded the steam client (no more difficult than installing firefox and everyone on here can do that) and installed my games and was away and playing in no time No scratched discs, no need for a collection of discs sitting out, no need to change discs when you want to play a different game.....

Don't get me wrong, I have a 360 which I use to play Forza 3 and 4 and I do like it for racing, but PC gaming is so much less costly than people make out and so much less complicated. I remember when we got our first PC in 1992, gaming was a bloody minefield!

Did you have enough RAM? Was the RAM actually upgradeable? Was your CPU fast enough? Did you have that port in the back for the joystick? Change to disc 2 now. Gawd, it was terrible! Even when we got our second PC back in 1997 it was still pretty poor, did you have the right version of direct x? The PC didn't have an AGP slot and back in those days onboard graphics was truly woeful.

Nowadays games are self patching, Windows update makes sure you're up to date and you can game with stuff that's 3 or 4 years old, case in point, my graphics card is actually just under 5 years old and still absolutely fine for the job. According to my normal upgrade schedule, I'm due a new PC in February, I won't bother with it though and might just get a new graphics card for 150 quid or so.