I‘ll tell you my boy. Back on the PS3, when Nuke Town Noob-Tubers were real - it was right after we lost the 25 kill streak nuke, which was an instant win - it was the last time I remember not being able to run on walls, have a jetpack. Back then you had to play to unlock new skins and weapons. That one level 37 dude running around with the low level weapon in gold? He was to fear. His K/D was about 12. but all changed when lootboxes appeared. We got colorful skins, not representing the sheer dedication and skill one had to have to unlock it, only showing the money the player spent in order to archieve it.
I mean, I could see if they tried to make this rent-to-own over 2-3 years. At half the price they’re offering.
But renting… where you’re paying over the entirety of the price in a single year, is fucking insane.
If renting, and updating it every 2 years, then for like 1/4th of the price then sure. I could see it being promoted how they are. Rent out older stock for 50% retail to at least get some value out of it while allowing people to pay ~$30 a month for a decent computer. (and then you could “upgrade” the lower tier with this to end up recouping 75% of retail over 4 years.)
But who the fuck is paying 10% of the cost a month to borrow an okay computer, even ignoring the full month cancelation fee, and ridiculous contract. (which is… ignoring a LOT.)
It is sad to see NZXT lowered to this as I used to have a decent view of them. They make some nice cases. CAM kinda lowered that view a bit, but I was in the beta for that and got a free water cooler out of it so I could overlook that (it’s improved a lot since beta, though it gathering data is still not great it’s less horrible than it was.). And pushing their own not as great products for the prebuilts still seemed okay for prebuilts for those scared to build on their own. But this is just… too much to overlook. Wild.
I appreciate you digging up the link and even timestamping the relevant area. Top class, thank you very much.
Also I forgot just how utterly massive of a cunt the Artesian CEO was. Man had significant Elon Musk vibes, Just didnt have the money or family money to stop his fall.
Oh I made that decision when they tried to replace the screws on my recalled rizer cable instead of replacing the whole unit on a $500 pc case. Get fucked nzxt
Well shit, wish they’d posted it before black Friday. It was only an AIO.
Edit: Cancelled. It was the wrong size, anyway. Sad I’m not gonna have a small LCD on the right one, though. NZXT was by far the cheapest in that respect.
If you live somewhere with consumer rights, by law you can return it no questions asked within 14 days of receipt (actual length of time may vary, UK is 14 days)
So is Australia, and these contracts will end them in court here real quick with potentially two Government departments: ACCC and ASIC. Feel sorry for Americans.
tl;dw A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan. They lie about their terms and their PC specs. They advertise no contracts but absolutely have contracts, and the terms are awful.
A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan
Literally a lower monthly payment, lower total paid and you end up owning a computer if you finance your computer with a predatory payday loan than with this rental program (per GN’s math)
Edit: at $259/mo that’s already $3108/year or 2-3x the cost of a good midrange DIY PC. Also at an incredible 36% interest rate because this hypothetical individual purchased a $3000 computer on a credit card and only pays a bit more than the minimum towards it, that’s only $177/mo on a 24 month loan. Or if you just got a $1500 computer (a pretty dang good computer!) on a 12% APR personal loan (pretty common from banks) you only pay $133/mo for 12 month, own the computer and only pay a total of $1600
The only way to make this rental program look at all good is if you are literally using the computer to make money but have very littlemoney upfront for a decent enough computer to do the same job (basically the “rent it for 1 month and win a fortnite tournament” fantasy one paid promoter suggested) except, oh look, you can buy a laptop from Dell for $520 or less than two months rental cost if you really don’t have the budget and then use that to make your money to fuel your future baller PC purchase. And I can assure you, that business laptop can run Fortnite if that’s your concern, because Fortnite will run on any potato PC if you turn the prettiness down enough.
Edit 2: Also I just found a similar laptop in 1 minute on ebay for $255 to further kill that “spend your allowance to rent a computer for a month to win a fortnite tournament” fantasy
I glanced at their site earlier (but after posting this comment) and it starts at $59/mo for a budget system with a 10th gen i5 and an RTX3050 so probably a $500ish PC when DIYed. And they have about a half dozen tiers above that up to the top $259/mo which is probably a $3000 PC if the parts were current. It’s still a bad deal no matter how you slice it though
And they are using paid influencers to promote said debt trap to those that don’t know any better, particularly children.
Probably the most insidious part of this to me. Seeing those clips of “influencers” pushing the idea of convincing your parents to get you a rental PC. Disgusting.
Yeah but I don’t ever use or look at that. Honestly, almost never go to look for shit later on here, so not a habit I have. So if I did save it, I wouldn’t see it til like 6 months from now and I’d probably just go… why the fuck is this saved? And delete it.
People commenting to be able to easily come back to the topic are creating an elephant trail, which will exist regardless of the UI designer, if the software allows people to do it.
it’s not about anger, the point of downvoting is to put low effort or other random crap comments below any others that may actually contribute to the topic.
That doesn’t work for me on Lemmy because in the app I use it doesn’t sort comments that way. So I see the comments basically newest first. This is reddit behavior is what it is.
Sync doesn’t do this by default (I haven’t changed any settings to this effect). I’m currently in settings now looking for a setting to change just to see.
Edit: Under settings there is an option for setting comment views (settings/comment options/comment views). However it defaults to new. Additionally it does the same thing in my bed browser using Alexandrite.
The point is though this doesn’t work for everyone using Lemmy and it’s definitely a carry-over habit from reddit and similar messageboard style sites.
Lemmy is meant to be a direct alternative to reddit and it copies plenty of design and user elements from there that don’t necessarily fit with the overall user use case here. There are whole instances without downvote buttons for example. This is an over-arcing statement that lumps together a bunch of instances and user bases that don’t necessarily comply with such a notion.
Lol at all the down votes… people could also have not engaged with your post… but apparently there is a right way to use your posting privileges and you broke the law.
I can’t overstate how nice it is having a tiny little Linux gaming PC in your backpack. It can run the majority of games I throw at it, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Stardew Valley. I replaced SteamOS with Bazzite, which is a little better IMO. And for the games I can’t get good performance with, it’s seamless to stream them from my Linux gaming rig. It also obviously works great for ROMs, and while some Switch games are glitchy, most run very well. You don’t have to limit yourself to games on Steam either, since it’s pretty easy these days to run any Windows, MacOS, or Android apps or games on Linux, and Heroic gives you 1-click installs for GOG and Epic game stores.
Battery life is around two and a half hours for a game like Cyberpunk 2077, and as much as 7-8 for something like Stardew Valley.
You could install that, yes. But keep in mind that distros made for the Deck include the game mode for the Deck, as well as Steam Input, which is one of the greatest things Valve has made, allowing you to make complex macros and rebind every part of the Deck, from the buttons to the trackpads or even the gyro, in almost any way you want. Without those things, the Deck is just a PC with a very small screen. Steam Input is what makes many games, even ones that were never meant to be played with a controller, viable on the Deck.
No, game mode is a specific mode made for the Steam Deck and other portables. I believe people have also gotten it to work on the ROG Ally. It replaces the desktop entirely while active, and only Steam games, and games that are added as a shortcut to Steam can be launched. It is not something that is launched from Steam like Big Picture mode, and while it is active, there is no desktop, and no other way to interact with the Deck. Using the desktop normally requires exiting game mode entirely.
Maybe one day enough younger people will be in elected that understand computers aren’t magic. There’s no fundamental difference between selling a DVD and a digital movie, from a legal perspective.
Ironically, from what I can see, the younger generation understands even less about computers. It’s like everything is so simple to use (smartphones, consoles, tablet) that they no longer need to understand the technology behind it.
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