Sometimes The Little Things Count

Maybe AMD would sell more if they did little things like this.

Yesterday, I was doing some computer things for a relative, and the lady friend of the relative’s son said she needed a laptop for school.  My marching orders were succinct: it had to be pink, it had to be light, and it had to play Spore. 

Very well, it was no problem to discover what the hardware requirements for Spore were, even laptop requirements.  Provided, of course, they were Intel laptop requirements.  

Where does that leave AMD?

If I get told that the game requires at least a 1.8GHz C2D or equivalent, what’s the AMD equivalent for a laptop processor?  Will a Turion™ 64 X2 1.8GHz TL-56 work?  Gee, I don’t know, C2Ds beat Turions clock for clock.  Will 1.9GHz work?  2.0GHz?  Does it make a difference if it’s the same speed, but it’s one of these new Puma processor like the RM-70?  Danged if I know, and neither does Google.  

Eventually, of course, people with such machines will try the game out, or at least the demo, and report on it, but this is not whenever, this is now.  What do I do?  Do I feel lucky?  Do I feel lucky with someone else’s money?  I think not.  I think I play it safe with Intel.  

You may snicker and say, “Yeah right, like Stroligo was really going to pick AMD,” but put yourself in my shoes.  How willing would you be to gamble?  More importantly, think of all the people not ready to check every last dirty little technical detail.  What are they going to do when that webpage is the beginning and end of their research, or whatever webpage contains that kind of AMD-less technical information for whatever is important to them?   

You may say, “This is hardly new,” and that’s true (though laptops do make the task of figuring out equivalents a bit harder), but how many sales does AMD lose this time of the year due to little items like this?   I’m not saying AMD should exhaustively test every little rinky-dink game, but maybe a little outreach to at least the major game producers might yield a lot of bang for little buck.  It’s a little detail, nothing grandiose or dramatic, but maybe AMD ought to consider promoting itself with these kind of under-the-radar actions.