Dell's Misleading Graphics Card Buying Advice 381
Barence writes "Dell's website includes a guide to graphics cards for PC novices which contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation. The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a 'standard graphics card,' is displaying a Windows desktop that's washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a 'high-end graphics card,' is showing the same desktop – but this time it's much sharper and more vivid. They're both outputting at the same resolution."
Re:Analog vs digital, maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but that difference is about an order of magnitude more subtle than shown on Dell's site.
Re:Analog vs digital, maybe (Score:3, Informative)
On a 17" monitor? Unless the AD/DA converters on your video card and the monitor are totally shoddy, I highly doubt it. Running 1680x1050 out of an Intel onboard card via VGA into a Samsung 223BW right now, and there is absolutely no difference between that and DVI or HDMI.
Sure, if the monitor you're using has crappy VGA inputs or you're using a crappy cable, yes, you'll have problems - problems which are nonexistent with a digital connection (there you'll just have no signal at all)... but it's not correct to say that VGA is inherently fuzzy and washed out.
This is an OptiPlex (Score:2, Informative)
This is an OptiPlex, intended primarily for business-type customers and not available on Dell's "Home" section. The likelihood of a novice user stumbling to this is low.
Not saying it's fair of them, but still--and their "help me choose" pages are rarely representative of the actual choices, anyway (this being an exception, except it's misleading).
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Analog vs digital, maybe (Score:3, Informative)
And even the cheapest on-board graphics come with a DVI port these days.
Re:Wow! Cheating in advertising! Something new? (Score:5, Informative)
The big difference is that in the UK and EU there's an excellent chance that this is illegal. Strange as it may seem, unlike the US we actually require adverts to be somewhat true - and not just by tacking on a timestretched disclaimer sped up to a garble at the end. For example, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" ad campaign was ultimately sunk because fresh beer does not, in fact, taste better. Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages, the damage was done.
I would urge as many of you that summon up the enthusiasm to send a polite email to the Advertising Standards Authority [asa.org.uk]. Since this portion of the Dell website is aimed at UK customers, they must abide by UK laws.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:4, Informative)
"Might have". The phrase you want is "might have".
It's true though, not everybody has a vote. I'm one of them. Where I live you can only vote if you were born here.
Re:Wow! Cheating in advertising! Something new? (Score:5, Informative)
The ASA are actually one of the most capable regulatory bodies within the UK. I've been continually impressed by them demanding peer reviewed evidence from manufacturers to support their claims, and by the decent balance their provide when people complain about adverts that go against their morals/religion.
A few years ago I read that the average number of complaints to the ASA that lead to the advert people pulled was 1.3 . In other words they take every complaint on their merit rather than from public pressure. So if you think an advert violates one of the standards, there is a good chance you can get it pulled.
The badscience forum provides an excellent Activisim section [badscience.net] that can help when constructing these complaints.
Re:Standard? (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt that. All the five Optiplex workstations we had at my old work had different hardware despite officially being identical Optiplex models. It made supporting them hell. Optiplex is the cheap crap of business hardware, and what hardware they actually contains depends on what was available cheapest by Dell when throwing the machine together.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:4, Informative)
You do know that there are three types of dehydration and water alone will not help two of them, right? Dehydration, despite the name, does not mean 'lack of water'. Dehydration is the word for homeostasis imbalance, which is when your body does not have enough salt water.
The most common type of dehydration is actually hypovolemia, which is not having enough sodium. So when people are dehydrated, they almost always need electrolytes (It's what plants crave!) and water, not just water alone. Drinking water alone can, in fact, make such problems worse.
The type of dehydration where people are just 'out of water', and thus can be solved by just adding water, is actually pretty rare for people to have. And it's usually a sign of an actual medical condition (As opposed to sweating out salt that needs replacing, which is perfectly normal.), so just drinking water is hardly a 'solution' there. You really need to see a doctor if you find yourself 'lacking water' for some inexplicably reason.
I love how idiots are running around laughing 'Ha ha, the EFSA is so stupid, of course water stops dehydration, herp derp.'. Uh, no, it doesn't. If you're actually getting dehydrated in the actual medical sense (As opposed to using to hyperbolically mean 'thirsty'.), no, you shouldn't drink fucking water, it can screw you up even more. Drink some Gaterade or something like that.
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, they did say: Water doesn't prevent dehydration. They said: You can't claim bottled water is better at preventing dehydration than tap water, and you're claim implies that.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, I probably should mention: It's nearly impossible for you to have lose too much water (and no salt) to become dehydrated without something medically wrong with you, but you can easily gain too much salt, and hence not have enough water.
So it is possible to have not enough water, and too much salt, without a underlying medical condition...if, and only if, you've simply been eating salt. Like half a cup of salt. Do not do that. (Duh. There's a reason your body says 'Ugh' to that idea.)
Or, as the most common real world situation it comes up in, inadvertently drinking salt water because you've been swimming in it.
If you do that and become dehydrated, you should drink straight water.
Otherwise, you're either missing just salt, or salt and water, and you should drink 'salty water', aka, water with some electrolytes, aka, Gatorade or other such drinks, which gives you both water and salt in the correct ratio, and your body can fix your salt vs. water balance using that.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:4, Informative)
With moderate (~5-10% water loss, diagnosis varies by age; most commonly due to diarrheal illness in children) or severe (~15% fluid loss, usually near-fatal and due to bleeding) dehydration, potomanias may develop with pure water rehydration, but central pontine myelinolysis, refeeding syndrome, or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome can occur if electrolytes/glucose are replenished too quickly. That's the reason anyone who's moderately dehydrated should be managed by a doctor.
BTW, I'm not sure what dictionary you're using. Dehydration is "dryness resulting from the removal of water" and hypovolemia is the intravascular depletion of fluids. "Not having enough sodium" is called hyponatremia. "Homeostasis imbalance" could refer to just about anything in medicine, as people develop symptoms of disease when the disease process can no longer be compensated for. "Dehydration" in everyday layperson use corresponds to mild dehydration (verified by studies), and isn't hyperbole at all.