The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[highoctane]

While I grant that a lot of GPU users out there who go to upgrade probably are smarter than the average consumer...

Whoa I wouldn't call a gpu user smarter than the avg consumer, more hardware savy than the avg consumer maybe. More like allot of gpu users have an interest in computers while the avg consumer is only interested in getting on say the internet and could care less about the mechanisms that allow them to actually browse the internet or how the computer works.
Fermi

You're giving consumers wayyyy too much credit here. How else would you explain Best Buy having $200 mid-range cards from a year ago... and seeing people actually buy it.

The consumer is you me and everyone else, you were not born knowing what you know now nor where any of us. If you don't want to buy junk/outdated hardware its not hard to get informed before buying but if you don't care about the hardware you're buying it doesn't matter either way because you don't care. Hence you can't really blame a company for selling someone something they bought when they themselves don't even know what they want and bought it anyways.
Fermi

So many B&M stores prey on the uninformed it's ridiculous...

I would agree which is what I've been going round in circles talking about. If you want to make the right choices your only option is to be well versed in regards to the item you plan to purchase. Blame can go both ways for the consumer and the store but if the consumer doesn't wise up the store will give the consumer what they think they want with no questions asked. Then again if the customer doesn't know any better and is happy with their purchase in the end who are we to say they got duped. They may have gotten exactly what they thought they wanted because they really don't know the difference and even if they got the better hardware they probably wouldn't know the difference.
Fermi

Like it's been said... think of your average American... then realize that he's only average and how many more are stupid?

Most people here are hardware savy because they are interested in hardware in general, that doesn't mean non hardware savy consumers are stupid they simply don't share an enthusiasts level of interest in regards to their hardware purchases. They probably have other interests and think computer hardware folks are crazy stupid for spending so much money on something that gets outdated pretty much annually.
Fermi

And as technology improves/gets more advanced, the gap between the "knows" and the "dont knows" only gets larger

Sure but the "don't knows" don't matter because they don't care or don't care enough to know what needs to be known to be in the "know", so the "don't knows" might also be considered "don't cares" because it don't matter to them.

So we have people who are hardware savy that care enough to learn about hardware because of interests to make smart choices and we have computer users that simply want to use a working computer and don't care about the hardware regardless.
Fermi