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:The article is much too kind ... (Score:5, Interesting)
They may have changed it now, but I had a good laugh at the AT&T uVerse bandwidth recommendations last time a family member was shopping. They'd recommend their very top tier plan if you like to watch HD movies and listen to music. I think Netflix recommends 5Mbps for HD. There was some bizarre strata of recommended services and plans for the rest, all of which were so decoupled from reality as to be worthless.
You know regular people everywhere actually use those kinds of recommendations when selecting packages, so it's pretty shady. And of course what they didn't mention anywhere were the upcoming data caps.
Minecraft (Score:4, Interesting)
Digging a little deeper. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the look of the two monitors on the 'example' page, it looks like they're showing 27 or 30 inch monitors. If that's true, then the comparison of the 'low end' Radeon 3450 at a max of 1920x1200 to a 3470 or higher with a max resolution of 2560x1600 (the native resolution of a 30 inch monitor) will look something close to the example photos.
Not labeling the examples with the types of cards used, resolutions, sizes, etc is close to unconscionable for a business computer comparison / assist site.
The funny thing is that even if that's true, then the lowest end baseline integrated intel graphics chip would match the high end in display resolution, and therefore, sharpness on any monitor Dell sells.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... using words like "misleading" and "unfair." It's fraud, plain and simple.
Of course you are right. However almost all marketing involves implying things that are not true.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is another problem here which may explain why companies do this; if they recommend you a service for HD movies and a 3 hour movie has a single hickup during playback, they're likely to get sued. Therefore anything which requires real-time performance (something the internet cannot guarentee), they'll just tell you to get the most expensive service. That way, when they get sued, they atleast can't be blamed for knowingly recommending an under-specced service, however reasonable a less expensive package might have been.
Doesn't mean it's "right", just that ligitious people and a law system interpretting law by the letter (thus ignoring common sense and reason) forces everybody to twist reality in order to cover their asses. They've made it risky to be honest.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:2, Interesting)
From what I hear from disgruntled AT&T costumers, you only get a quarter of the advertised speed anyways. In that case, it makes sense to choose the 24Mbps "Max Turbo" plan for 5Mbps HD content.
Re:This is an OptiPlex (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just misleading, it's actually lying. The pictures are accompanied by the phrase "Images shown are for demonstrative purposes only". But they're not demonstrative of anything like the difference between a high-end and low-end graphics card.
The fact that it's for business users does not in any way excuse Dell for flat-out lying to customers.
Re:Analog vs digital, maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
1920x1080 over an SVGA port with a low quality cable looks absolutely horrible,
The problem is almost always caused by the sync on the monitor being slightly out of phase with the clock on the graphics card. Back in ye olde days of TFT monitors, before DVI (I had one--I was an early adopter), the auto adjustment was not especially good and you had to tweak the phase slightly using the on-screen controls to get a pin-sharp image. With even really cheap monitors these days, the analog sync is exceptionally good compared to what it was. Almost all crappiness can be fixed by pressing the auto-adjust button.
I regularly use a TFT monitor driven with an analog cable at 1920x1200, and it's one of those modern, thin super cheap looking VGA cables. It looks great.
BTW, VGA is pretty forgiving on short cables. The frequencies aren't that high and any even moderately passable co-ax will do fine, and cheap modern coax is manufacturered to an astonishingly high spec.
And yes, I am a pixel nazi, like the visual equivalent of golden ears. I work in image processing, so I am very sensitive to things like ringing, JPEG artefacts, mismatched resolutions, phase errors, dithering, etc.
Re:Analog vs digital, maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with this (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, how else would you quickly and efficiently explain 3D acceleration to someone who has no idea what it is? Let's same I have a game and I want to run it at 30 frames per second. On a low-end card, I have to turn the details down and decrease the resolution to get the same speed - in other words, make it "blurrier." On the high-end card, I crank everything up and it looks nicer. Dell didn't want to get into the whole give and take of speed / detail / resolution, that's not who this guide is for. Blurrier is a good enough representation of those technicalities.
If there's anything wrong with this, it's that they used a desktop instead of a game screenshot. I supposed that potentially could cause someone to upgrade who had no legitimate need for a nicer graphics card. But with Aero and whatever desktop nonsense there is now, it's not that misleading.
And there you go. The first time, and probably the last time, that I've stood up for Dell.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... using words like "misleading" and "unfair." It's fraud, plain and simple.
Apart from that test below the image saying: "Image for illustrative purposes only". Legally that probably gets them off the hook on the fraud charges.
Also under our retarded british legal system you have probably now libelled them and they can sue you for millions of pounds in lost revenue.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:4, Interesting)
The other problem is that many customers don't even know they are being had. Modern stuff especially electronics are so complicated that the average person just doesn't have the time to figure it all out and buy rationally. They usually become dependent on store recommendations or someone they know, if they know someone.
This is part of the reasons why companies make there offerings confusing and difficult to compare. It's been called a "confusopoly" to make sure people can't understand why a competitors products may be better. Notice how there are so many "customized" versions of smartphones? Nonsensical models numbers for a ton of computer parts, etc.
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:4, Interesting)
They've been doing that since long before the Monster crap. I worked there many years ago in high school. They'd purposely adjust the lower-priced TVs so that the color was off or the image was blurry, or sometimes they'd even futz with the vertical hold settings to introduce a slow roll (this was long before non-CRT tvs were available), and meanwhile they'd have the higher priced ones set perfectly to get people to pay more.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The article is much too kind ... (Score:3, Interesting)
What, are you stupid?
Yes, the salt in water (And everything else) is normally enough for people. To maintain their salt balance. No one said people had to run around drinking Gatorade to maintain a balance normally.
And when someone sweats too much losing salt and water, then drinks water and thus imbalances themselves (Which is, by far, the most common form of dehydration.), the solution is to not drink more fucking water, you idiot.
That is so stupid I cannot even comprehend what you are saying. It's like they're on fire and the prescription is to pour room-temperature gasoline on them, because, hey, it's room temperature, it should cool them down, right? I mean, it's not like losing salt and water and replacing just the water isn't what got them into the problem in the first place.
I don't care if they fucking drink Poweraide or whatever. Hell, they can eat a goddamn tablespoon of salt, I don't care.(1) Although I have to suggest the drinks designed to supply electrolytes are a bit more tasty than salt, or even salt water.
And I have to suggest that quite possibly you are suffering from mild dehydration, as you are presenting the symptom of 'confusion'.
1) Actually, people should not eat plain salt. It is likely to make them throw up, which makes dehydration worse. And you run the risk of going too far. If you don't have a drink designed to replace salts, drink water and eat pretzels(2) or something.
2) And now I will be called a pretzel shill.