“Do you think I should sell my old laptop and get a new one instead?” A friend asked not too long ago.
“Why, what’s wrong with your laptop?” I responded.
“Nothing really. It’s just that it’s not able to run any of the new games anymore. The games are either blurry, or they just won’t install at all.”
“If you’re looking for an upgrade to suit your gaming needs, why not just sell your laptop for cash and buy a desktop instead?”
Why not indeed? Don’t get me wrong, laptops are cool and all, and they are quite handy for academic and business affairs because of their portability. And if you bought your laptop within the last five years or so, chances are it is still able to run the mandatories like Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, and the latest edition of Adobe Photoshop. However, video games are another matter entirely, being that every video game release season is a barometer for yet another advancement in graphical capabilities; the graphics which your five-year-old laptop simply cannot handle. There is a reason why.
While there are laptops that support part replacements, most laptops (if not all) do not allow component upgrading. Furthermore, these replacements are very product-specific, making them more difficult and expensive to obtain than they should be.
Desktops, meanwhile, are built from the ground up to be very much customizable. Every major component can be replaced and/or upgraded as a user sees fit. Not enough memory to allocate? Nothing an additional RAM card couldn’t fix. Hard drive space not enough to store all your downloaded digital back-up movies? Buy another TB of hard drive. Video card not powerful enough to make you spray alien blood in full-detailed glory? Head on over to the nearest computer shop and purchase the latest NVIDIA or Radeon GPU.
The advantage of desktops is that every component can be swapped out piecemeal. This bodes well for those under a tight budget, as it means you can upgrade your PC one component at a time, spacing your purchases evenly between salaries. Moreover (and provided that you have the technical know-how), you may also overclock each, or all, computer component to make them perform beyond production standards; a definite fix before making another whole desktop purchase, and an activity that has blossomed into its own sub-hobby niche.
And why not just buy a PS3 or a 360 if all you’re after is gaming capabilities? Well, I love me some first-person shooter action; and I don’t know about you, but FPSes don’t feel very functional to control unless it’s with the tried-and-true keyboard-and-mouse control setup. The same thing goes for real-time strategy (RTS) games, which practically demand the keyboard and the mouse.
As for the rest of the video game genres, using a gamepad on the PC is as easy as plugging a custom controller into its USB port.
Video games are big business, and companies know this. As such, they have seen fit to release most games as multi-platform; meaning, versions for the PS3, the 360, and the PC. Really, with a desktop, you can’t go wrong.
So, if you fancy yourself a gamer, what are you waiting for? Head on over to your nearest computer and Google how to sell a laptop online. You’ll be glad you did.
About author: Mikaela V. Taylor is an aspiring blogger which occasionally writes about electronics. She currently writes for Cashforlaptops.com where one can trade in laptop and at the same time help reduce tech waste.
