Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   As I understand it, "minimum system requirements" should mean "if you
> want this game to run and be playable at a decent frame rate, you should
> have at least this kind of system".

No, it basically translates to "this is the slowest thing on which we promise
this game to run anywhere close to playable - if you have a slower system and
experience problems, our support team will tell you to go fly a kite".

The reason for choosing a certain system as the minimum requirement may be
manifold: The game may actually have been observed to not run properly on
slower systems; or the game developer isn't expecting any member of the target
group to be running a slower system, and so didn't bother to do extensive
testing on any slower system.

Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.

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clipka wrote:

> Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
> requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
> cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.

Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new 
product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if 
it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> I don't know about game makers, but I do list "higher than necessary 
> minimum requirements specs" to customers because lots of Windows 
> machines are filled with CPU-hogging, RAM-eating crapware (installed by the
> computer maker or by the user) that completely nullify the actual 
> minimum requirements.

In a similar vein, I get a (nauseating) kick whenever a game manual 
suggest, "If you have problems, try turning off your antivirus!"

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:

> In a similar vein, I get a (nauseating) kick whenever a game manual 
> suggest, "If you have problems, try turning off your antivirus!"

Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
something? I've yet to see that one personally...

(With the possible exception of Norton Antivirus, which is annoying to 
the point of almost being adware itself.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something?

  Yes. I had some kind of problem between F-Secure and AQtime, which
made the latter sometimes behave erratically.

  After discussing about it with the AQtime developers, they fixed the
problem on their side.

  Besides, I suppose resident scanners can sometimes slow things down,
especially if they decide to scan the files the game is trying to read...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

I once had an AV program pop up a box asking if I really wanted to install 
something, and by the time I answered the program had decided something had 
timed out and failed out.

I also had Avast get false positives on a couple of things, including 
Quickbooks, forcing a reinstall.

I haven't had it screw with a game, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Warp wrote:
>   Besides, I suppose resident scanners can sometimes slow things down,
> especially if they decide to scan the files the game is trying to read...

Real-time virus scanning: the attempt to improve the perceived 
responsiveness of virus scanning by waiting for the user to request access 
to a file before blocking access until it has been scanned.  :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
> > requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
> > cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.
>
> Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new
> product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if
> it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?

Well, I didn't have the impression they deliberately *exaggerated* the minimum
requirements - they *were* that high...

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clipka wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
>>> requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
>>> cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.
>> Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new
>> product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if
>> it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?
> 
> Well, I didn't have the impression they deliberately *exaggerated* the minimum
> requirements - they *were* that high...

No - I got the impression they deliberately made the software 
inefficient so that people would mistake this for "powerful".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:26:51 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with
> something?

Yes.  Performance impact of some AV software can cause all sorts of weird 
problems.

Jim

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