Saturday, November 18, 2006

Computer Software and Games

Watch out if you are considering buying computer software or games for yourself or others this Christmas.

We recently bought 2 games that were incompatible for the two computers we have.

You have to check out the vendors website and read reviews about the product as well as reading any requirements printed on the box. Even so, you can easily be tricked into buying software that will not work on the intended computer.

Most vendors are reliable to return your money if you made a mistake, but you usually have to act promptly for a refund. You should also review the vendor's return policy before you buy.

Our desktop is six years old and the laptop is about 3 years old both running Windows XP Pro, but both are probably pretty obsolete with hardware features currently. We probably have a new computer in our future real soon.

Several years ago the hard drive needed replacing in the desktop and all of the software had to be reloaded. The first indication of a problem was a failed upgrade from Norton Virus to Norton Internet Protection. The requirement was a higher speed CPU than the one in the machine, but I thought it would still be ok and run slower...but I later found that they did not support the computer chip in my machine. They were excellent returning my money and I had to install McAfee Internet Security instead and it works well.

We haven't had a problem with software or games until last week when two games failed. We haven't drilled down to uncover the problem to see if we can still run them on our current machines. The problems are not obvious from requirements on the boxes, but we will check it out.

It seems that new software and games take advantage of new hardware technology currently available and really do not always have built in backward compatibility with even slightly older technology.

I like to hold off if possible buying new software until I have to purchase a new computer and then try to obtain everything at once.

Games are a different because people really into them always want the latest and greatest. This is the first time we ran into a glitch with games.

We recommend investigating the software or games requirements to make sure it will run on your computer or get assistance from someone you know is an expert about it. If you are gifting it then maybe you should consider giving cash or a gift certificate instead.