Clancy and I were brainstorming what to get my family for Christmas. We are getting my brothers each a subscription to Rhapsody music. Oddly, they actually don’t have a gift program. They should really take a cue from Netflix, which is very aggressive about trying to get you to sign other people up. So basically I’m going to have to cut my brothers a check and tell them what it’s for (or, if they’re really not in to the idea, tell them they can use it for something else).
My parents are a bit more difficult. I settled on The World’s Largest Crossword Puzzle for Mom. The thing that came to mind immediately for Dad was RAM without a note saying “I told you so.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: When getting a new computer, get twice the RAM they offer. Stock machines come with twice the processing power you need and half the RAM. I am totally serious on this. My parents have a 450MHz machine running Windows 98 on 384 megs that outperforms their 1100MHz running Windows XP with 256 megs of RAM. It’s that important. I told Dad what he needed to do, but he didn’t and it’s been a pain in the rear ever since.
The previous machine had originally come with 128 megs of RAM and I supplied the extra 256 as a gift (well, sort of a gift, I sold it to them, but they never paid me because they forgot and I decided not to remind them). I decided that would be a really good idea. The only problem was that I didn’t know if their computer used standard SD RAM or DDR RAM and asking my father what kind of RAM his computer had would kind of be a tipoff.
Proud of myself, I sent him an email asking for the general specs on the machine. He’d know I was thinking of something to do with the computer, but he wouldn’t know what. Brilliant, I tell you. Absolutely brilliant.
So I send the email.
The first line of his response is “Hey, if you’re thinking of Christmas gifts, how about an extra 256mb of RAM? You were right about that. I need more.”
Never has been being told I’m right by my father been so deflating…
Anyway, got that squared away. Next up, what the heck are we going to do about Clancy’s family?!
Or as they (used to?) say in the forums at Woot.com:
MORE RAM IN THE BOX!
Hey, that’s my motto.
When I switched to a mini-cube PC, my RAM slots went down from 3 to 2. There went 256MB. I didn’t think I’d feel the performance hit, but oh, did I. Time to get 2 512MB sticks and get high on life.
Comment by Ethan — December 9, 2005 @ 9:46 am
Real Estate!!!
Comment by Barry — December 9, 2005 @ 11:26 am
hey — we do offer special holiday prices on rhapsody gift subscriptions. check www.rhapsody.com/gifts or www.real.com/gifts for more info — 30% off on 1, 3, and 6 month subscriptions.
matt
rhapsody PR guy
Comment by matt — December 15, 2005 @ 4:27 am
Thanks for the heads up, Matt. That’ll make it much easier. You guys should do a bigger push on this (or at least make people as lazy as me aware of it!) as it’s a wonderful Christmas idea.
Comment by trumwill — December 17, 2005 @ 10:49 pm