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[Tulac]

I say be creative, for whatever it means..

[Don Andy]

Save some money and make some kind of deal with your parents. I managed to get half of the money for my comp out of my father. I had to pay it back slowly though, but doing some work for him, like writing articles or stuff usually gets the money back in fast.

So, bottom line: Ask your parents for the money (maybe they'll even pay it whole) and offer them to do something for it. The best thing is to let them choose what you have to do.

If they don't play along you'll just have to earn it "the hard way".

Oh, and forget the whole thing about the fake-destroying or even real destroying. It's just not right :P

[Jordan]

Just basically save up your money ask your parents to loan you some money maybe!

[Playbahnosh]

Originally posted by rlbell
Speaking as a parent, I find your suggestion loathsome in the extreme...

Jeez dude, that's exaggerated hypocrite talk, even from a parent. Just don't say you never did anything like this when you were young. <_< A little cunning won't do any harm to anybody. That ancient relic of electronic history would brake sooner or later anyways, and I didn't said anything about intentionally destroying it. In fact, I adviced him not to, because there could be important data in there for his parents too. And what's good in just faking the malfunction is that can be easily reversed if needed with no permanent damage and without trace. Without some cunning he will fail in life for sure, the world is cruel.

Second, I think you noticed the very first thing I said in this thread, don't you? I said that this is a "last resort" thing when everything else fails, like begging, whining, trying to get more money outta parents...etc, and this is just an advice not a rule. I totally agree with all the other ideas here like bartering with parents or ask for a loan or something.

But the thing is, if he want to get a computer that would still be competitive in the next few years to come, he will need some serious $. A computer is an unremunerative investment. It burns your money away just to keep it up and running and performance-efficient, it's a constant expense. But thanks to that, prices are degrading fast, so he can get a mildly reasonable computer at a pretty fair price. That is if he just want's to use it to office work and DOS games. Newer programs will laugh at that setup and they will only produce a slide-show as framerate....

I do this by buying a fairly top of the line computer and use it until it becomes obsolete, say 3-4 years at most, at that time prices of newer parts will sink to a reasonable level so I can buy some top notch parts from my 3-4 year savings. I think it is a good strategy, at least it works for me. But for this he will need a top of the line computer first worth a small fortune. I done this by not asking anything for birthdays and christmas for 2 years so it added all up and I could finally buy my brutally powerful beast of a computer (that was a PII 333Mhz at that time). Since then I do it as I told you, upgrading every 2-3 years only but with top grade stuff...

[punch999]

Hey that "cunning" Costs your parents money that they have to work for. It isn't innocent at all. It is conning your parents into believing they need to get a very expensive item for a problem that doesn't exist. That isn't cunning that is just plain mean.

[Playbahnosh]

That is why I said last resort. And if he feels like it, he can always make it working again so nothin irreversible is done. He just have to decide for himself then...

[efthimios]

playbahnosh that is my strategy on buying Pcs as well. I got my last one in summer of 2002 (a laptop, top of the line), and my next pc was/is this one that I got in eh december? I plan to keep it for 2-3 years at least, or sooner if I have the money.

It is a good trategy, buy top of the line, and be fine for years. In the long run it doesn't cost more than upgrading with average components every 6m - 1 y or so.

[win98]

Okay faking a break down is a last resort.

[win98]

Or you could just copy this file to the root of your boot drive and say yes if it is overwriting any file on there. If will fake windows saying it has found the harddrive in your computer is on it's last legs only use it as a last resort as you may need to use a bootdisk with qbasic on it to fix the computer but then again you do not have a working floopy so replace the old one if you get the old pc if your parents get a new one.

[Grinder]

You're going a little over the top now, Playbahnosh.
As pointed out earlier, faking a breakdown is just not fair to
his parents. They work hard for the money, you know...
And besides, there's many ways to convince parents
that you need a computer. And I had to do that for my---
---let me see---sixth computer. the ones before were not
such great machines, but I either got them from my parents
(the first and third ones) or bought them with my own money
(the fourth and fifth ones). So, I bought 2 computers and was given
4. That's pretty generous of my parents, don't you think? Who did
ever tell them I would need all those computers? No one
besides me. And that is why I would never seriously damage
their computers just to get a new one or things like that. It just
wouldn't be fair after all they've done for me.

And by the way, I have a brother and two sisters who would also need
a computer, and I'm the only one of us who has one. Another reason why
I would not trick them into buying a new top-of-the-line computer from
the money they and they alone earned.