How do B&M stores get away with these shenanigans?

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GushpinBob

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Dec 11, 2007
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Today, I was at Office Depot looking for an el cheapo desk and chair and saw this gem.
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WTF? 52 bucks for a PCI video card with a chipset that's nearly 10 years old? You can't even get Vista or Windows 7 to recognize these cards. How the hell do these stores get away with this shit?
 
Because sadly, people come in and would rather spend that to "fix" their computer from 2000, instead of spending 300 on a new computer..

I worked at Best Buy...I quit because crap like this drove me nuts!
 
For what it's worth, Newegg has two PCI Radeon 7000's for sale as well. Although for $39 and $34 before shipping though.

The card is, as Neonardo says for people using an old PC. But figure this, some PC for grandma to read her e-mail and play solitare or Farmville on doesn't really need much. And such a user is thinking "If it still runs, keep it running". As for Vista or Windows 7 not recognizing it, they might still be using Windows XP or even Win 98 on grandma's machine.

As an aside, I remember walking into a friend's house and seeing an old Apple II as their sole computer. And no, they weren't dirt poor, they were reasonably well off. Mind you, this would have been about 1996 or so, but even then an Apple II would have been ancient and outdated.

So, how they get away with it? Go ask grandma with the Gateway she bought for $500.00 ten years ago (and figures she spent a lot of money for it as well).
 
maybe they're going for the
AveJoe 'I heard the latest greatest Radeon cards are the 6x00s but I found a better one for dirt cheap! Must get!'
Now that would be hilarious.
 
neonardo said:
Because sadly, people come in and would rather spend that to "fix" their computer from 2000, instead of spending 300 on a new computer..

I worked at Best Buy...I quit because crap like this drove me nuts!
Click to expand...
This and also these are the same idiots that claim that all other OS's other than XP are the devil :D
 
ihira said:
maybe they're going for the
AveJoe 'I heard the latest greatest Radeon cards are the 6x00s but I found a better one for dirt cheap! Must get!'
Now that would be hilarious.
Click to expand...

It would be pretty funny. Wait a year or so and then see the "1 day n00bie" posts complaining how their new Radeon card doesn't fit/ they got scammed/ performs like shit. :D

GotNoRice said:
That box has probably been sitting on the shelf for nearly 10 years.
Click to expand...

Probably not, but I bet it's spent most of its life in a dark, forgotten corner of one of their warehouses.
 
i work retail too, and maybe once a year someone comes in to buy an 8400gs pcie, lol
 
Hmm... judging by the pic, theres only one left! Get it while it lasts.
 
It's probably still in production.

They only keep the crappy cards in production. You can still buy a 7000 or 9000, but good luck trying to find a 9700.

There's no market for old high-end cards. There's still a pretty big market for old low-end cards, because the people who buy it don't care.

I got a Radeon 7000 AGP back in '07, when it was already ancient, because I had a TV with DVI and I wanted a DVI AGP card to put in my old P4 rig to hook it up. This is when the X1000s were out, and it was 4 generations out of date.

PCI video cards can be useful for driving extra displays (I used to run a Geforce 3 with two monitors and a third monitor off of a PCI S3 Virge, back when it was all AGP and dual-GPUs were unheard of, so if you wanted three you needed a PCI card. Not as big an issue now.)

Or, as others have stated, this is a good fix for someone's old broken PC.

Remember, there's more to upgrading than just spending money. If granny's 10 year old PC breaks, you'll happily spend the money to fix it because it will be easy. You pop in the new card, update drivers, and done. You buy granny a new computer, you need to migrate all her documents over, personalize all her settings, copy her bookmarks from IE 4, buy a 56k modem for it and install horrific proprietary NetZero software to dial up. It's a huge pain in the ass for you to do.

Out of curiosity, what's the other one on the right that's a 256MB AGP Radeon?
 
Yup that's a Radeon 9550 AGP x8 card! So about six years old?

Didn't even think it was possible to buy those old cards brand new in the box off the shelf these days. Those are museum quality pieces. :)
 
actually as an emergency card it will let you use your computer if your vidcard blew up.

Additionally, in a little reading apparently installing the windows xp drivers in win 7 allows you to set a proper resolution and refresh rate with the card, so for shit like surfing the web and writing papers you would be okay.

I hate brick and mortar stores as much as the next guy, but in this instance, I see nothing wrong at all.
 
stealthy123 said:
actually as an emergency card it will let you use your computer if your vidcard blew up.
Additionally, in a little reading apparently installing the windows xp drivers in win 7 allows you to set a proper resolution and refresh rate with the card, so for shit like surfing the web and writing papers you would be okay.
I hate brick and mortar stores as much as the next guy, but in this instance, I see nothing wrong at all.
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The price isn't a problem to you?? You could pick up that same card for like $5 on here or another forum :D
 
Where... do they get these cards from?
Surely they're not still being manufactured.
 
UtopiA said:
Where... do they get these cards from?
Surely they're not still being manufactured.
Click to expand...
The back of the warehouse. There're always people who're willing to hold onto junk longer to get a slightly higher price for it; which because only the most ignorant/desperate person would buy takes for ever.

It's possible the PCI GF9400/Radeon 4350 are still in production, along with the AGP 4xxx series cards. I'd be shocked if the AGP GF6200 was still being made. At best nVidia might've manufacturered a larger than normal number of these to sell to people who wanted to keep an antique alive and who hated ATI before ending all AGP production. Without any remaining competition ATI was able to hold out longer, but the fact that they never released a 40nm card using AGP indicates that the market has finally gotten to small for them to bother with as well.

IMO a 28/40nm PCI card is more likely these days than anything newer on the AGP bus; although I'd rather see a PCIe 1x card show up for people who want more video out but don't have a 2nd 16x slot. Even with the 1.0 spec it's really not any slower than legacy PCI after factoring in the other stuff attached to the bus; while the 2.0 and 3.0 specs boost a 1x slot to the same bandwidth levels as 1/2x agp slots which is plenty to do anything except game on smoothly.
 
iviyth0s said:
The price isn't a problem to you?? You could pick up that same card for like $5 on here or another forum :D
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For an emergency card the fact that you get it now instead of in a few days is the killer feature; and for long term non-gaming use a bottom tier relic is a better choice than a middle/upper tier relic (even if a few generations newer) because of the power consumption.

Ordering a newish bottom tier card on sale for $20ish is a better deal, but outside of the [H]ardcore type of geek no one stockpiles spare parts like that.
 
DanNeely said:
For an emergency card the fact that you get it now instead of in a few days is the killer feature; and for long term non-gaming use a bottom tier relic is a better choice than a middle/upper tier relic (even if a few generations newer) because of the power consumption.

Ordering a newish bottom tier card on sale for $20ish is a better deal, but outside of the [H]ardcore type of geek no one stockpiles spare parts like that.
Click to expand...
Ya I guess you're right, I'm gonna open a computer store called "Emergency Parts" and then rip off the uneducated public with the oldest ebay cards/chips/memory/boards I can find :D.
 
I've made big box employees mad when overhearing their ignorant spiel being given to more ignorant customers. They hate it when a somewhat knowledgeable person steers their "prey" away from wasting money.
 
My theory is they just wait for the vendors' GPU numbers to wrap around.

That's why I bought 10 of these. When the AMD 7xxx HD series comes out, I'm gonna making a killing! ;)
 
DanNeely said:
For an emergency card the fact that you get it now instead of in a few days is the killer feature; and for long term non-gaming use a bottom tier relic is a better choice than a middle/upper tier relic (even if a few generations newer) because of the power consumption.

Ordering a newish bottom tier card on sale for $20ish is a better deal, but outside of the [H]ardcore type of geek no one stockpiles spare parts like that.
Click to expand...

Yes because as a backup, low end, ancient card...your gonna be worried about the possibility of paying an extra dollar a month to run the thing OMG!!! ITS SUCKIN IN HUGE POWAS!! OH THE BILL IS GONNA BE CRAZY.....
 
UtopiA said:
Where... do they get these cards from?
Surely they're not still being manufactured.
Click to expand...

i remember cleaning out some old janitor's closets (back in 2002) and seeing like 20 boxes of stuff like that and 34 UPS's. brand new in boxes that the company i used to work for bought and never installed. too bad they didn't invest in starwars memorabilia. my boss let me take home of the UPS's and a copy of windows 2000. didn't have any use for any of the other crap though.
 
That was taken in the Denton Tx Office Depot wasn't it? :p I saw the same thing the other day when I was in there looking for a laptop backpack.
 
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