I have a relatively powerful rig that I pretty much exclusively use to play games. Generally, when I buy a new rig, I keep it off line for several years to extend its lifespan. Recently, I notice that my laptop is not quite as powerful as I thought. Running Quake Wars on the lowest settings possible and still getting a low frame rate is not something that I want. So, I installed Quake Wars on the higher-end rig and found that it was capable (but not willing) to run ET:QW at the highest settings possible with a relatively high frame rate.

I want to connect my more powerful rig to the internet, but I want to do so without damaging the rig. So what should I do? No browsing? No downloads? Install AVG, Eusing Registry Repair and Adaware and nothing else? Anyone?

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Hi CrossLOPER,

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. You keep a rig disconnected to keep it super-safe, got it. And you're playing Quake on a laptop. But now you can't play something on the stand-alone rig, and you want to know whether you should connect it to the 'net?

How would connecting the machine to the internet help you? I'm sorry if I'm being thick, but I really don't understand.

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Now that I've reread my post, I can see the confusion.

The more powerful rig WILL play on max settings, but there is a slight bit of lag that tells me that my rig is simply not 100% capable of the task that is presented to it. I want to make my rig go online because of the stark contrast between how the game looks on the machines. Comparing the default texture quality on them is like comparing Oblivion to the first release of Counter-Strike (both are games which I enjoy, btw).

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I must have swallowed an extra helping of slow'n'thick pills this morning, 'cause I'm still struggling to get it.

• You have two computers
• A laptop
• And a desktop
• The desktop is powerful, suitable for gaming
• The desktop is never connected to the internets
• Latop runs slowly when you try to game

That's as far as I can follow. How will going online allow you to compare the two machines?

-edit-

Oh, wait, is it because you want to take the gaming rig online for multiplayer? Ah, that must be it. Man, you had me confused.

Well, if you put it online, it's online, and that's that. The only safe computer is one that is disconnected from the network, powered down and buried in a lead safe. But so long as you don't go browsing to warez sites in Internet Explorer or go hog-wild downloading shareware of dubious provenance, you should be okay.

It isn't just being online that slows Windows boxen down over time. Even locked-down corporate machines start to run slower after a year of use. It's not you; it's Windows.

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It's not just that, it's user perception as well. One can do a fresh install of Windoze every 6 months or so to have that "nice new car smell" again (ok, that was a lame analogy) and things will be reasonably fast. But use a box long enough, and it'll start to seem slower over time. Not much can be done about this.

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Yep. Just go on the rig you had before the one you're on now for a bit. It'll seem faster alright.

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Oh FINE, you are right!

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If I set it on high settings on the laptop, it will have 10-15 fps.

btw...

Sorry, Lemur. I thought you knew what Quake Wars was.

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OK. Here's another:

I want to do a minor upgrade to another stable computer of mine. It has 256MB RAM. I would like it to be around 1GB (or, enough to play Half-Life 2). New Egg narrowed it down to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?submit=ENE&Configurator=MemoryConfigurator&CFG=CFG003Presario%206020US&DEPA=0

Any suggestions?

I have 2 slots, btw.

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