The last few days have been horrible, as in “restraining myself from punting Jeremy off the balcony” horrible. If he’s not forgetting to do his chores, he’s outright refusing because he’s mad at me; which is immensely fun when I’ve just come home from work. He makes patronizing comments like, “I know you tried your best when you got the computer Mom but next time you’ll need to take me. You don’t know anything about computers so you got a crap one…”
The computer in question is an Acer Aspire with HDMI. It has a 2 terabyte hard drive, 6 gigs of RAM, and a 2.20GHz processor plus more than enough USB ports to charge and plug in all our devices. Jeremy’s mad because I didn’t buy a computer with a 4K resolution monitor. Course Jeremy’s not coughing up $4K to cover this dream computer of his and he forgets he loved our computer when we bought it. Last year he called it the Mini Beast because it was small and fast.
He pulls out all his stuff and leaves it spread across the entire apartment; we’re taking Rubbermaid bins of crap everywhere. Dishes and chewed tissues strewn across the computer desk. Laundry heaped in the bathtub (???). And a low-grade constant sniping.
But today he’s off to a Unitarian Universalist campground for two days with the Youth Group. He’s packed his TARDIS tea mug, a jar of honey, tea bags, his netbook, an extension cord, his favourite perfume… and clothes and other boring stuff. He almost forgot his pillows but he remembered his tea.
He should have a wonderful time. They have a pond with two beaches, hiking trails, and caves to explore. I told the camp supervisor that Jeremy would be happy camping with the girls. And he’s eagerly anticipating roasting marshmallows.
I miss him already.
Because I'm Fabulous 
Even my sister the heavy gamer and hard enthusiast doesn’t use use 4K screens yet. Unless you are that finicky about screen sharpness, and are that trained with an eye, you don’t need anything over a 300-350ppi. And those specs of that Acer seem decent for any gaming PC, more than enough for anyone who needs it for just business and browsing purposes.
Thanks 🙂 The funny thing is, he’s insisting this is a burning need while playing games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, Minecraft, and Kerbal Space Program. I’m pretty sure I could haul one of his old monitors out of the closet and it would work just as well with them.
Flip side is, if he’d bought this computer himself, I’m sure he’d still be raving about it. Only two more years until he’s no longer a teenager.
He could always work part time or do something on his own to save up and get an external screen. Go to Best Buy or somewhere else with working monitor displays and compare a 4K resolution with a 1080p. Will you see a difference? Will he? It’s pure marketing bull at this point. No games are really encoded yet for hi-def displays beyond 1080p. I have something of a trained eye (with a background in graphic design) and anything beyond a Retina resolution I can’t tell the difference.