Did a quick search but not sure this has come up before.

I'm taking 2 weeks off from work and I'm thinking of flying out to visit a friend. I'd like to have a gaming machine at my disposal for the duration but am struggling to justify the expense of transporting my fairly bulky desktop machine (or alternately, buying something more mobile just for this trip).

I've been looking around and I've come across a few places that offer short term rental services, although I haven't got a quote from any of them yet so I don't know what the costs would be like. Most of them tend to be vague about the specs as well (which is never good) even if they offer "gaming machines" as a rental option.

I figure I can just take up a portable hard disk with any data I need (steam folder and whatnot) and put it on the rented box until I'm done with it. Since the flight is probably gonna come up to at least $350 or $400 dollars return I figure renting a machine for another $100 or something is probably the simplest and most economical way to go.

I was wondering if any ausgamers folks have had good or bad experiences renting machines, or could recommend any particular businesses? Any pitfalls I should keep in mind or the like? I did a quick search but didn't come across any previous thread topics.

I've heard they're called "Net cafe's" and you can find them in populated areas.

Seems like $10-$25 a week is the going rate

http://www.rentsmart.com.au/rent-a-computer
http://macrent.com.au/?gclid=CPmTj-eB7rECFaRMpgodp0QA7A
http://www.radio-rentals.com.au/products/Computer---Office/Desktop
http://www.flexirent.com.au/Personal-Computer-Operating-Lease

if you're lucky someone here could lend you one, but it might be too much trouble



last edited by thermite at 16:21:22 17/Aug/12

you seriously haven't seen the adverts all over tv for mr rental?
http://www.mrrental.com.au/

2 weeks and you need a gaming pc? what game will you most likely be playing?

Does the bunker even exsist anymore?

Elysium in fortitude valley seems to be one of the newer LAN cages in town ATM.

You could always Get your mate to try and source a friends pc and you could borrow it or pAy them to borrow it

So 240000 dimes a dozen then?

why dont you get out an about when your on holiday ffs

yeah really why do you need a pc on a holiday lol

Yeah i went to brisbane for 2 weeks and i gotta say compared to my bedroom in my home city, i definitely preferred the bedroom in brisbane

Much less light

Internetz

Hey a*******

Which part of this paragraph...

I was wondering if any ausgamers folks have had good or bad experiences renting machines, or could recommend any particular businesses? Any pitfalls I should keep in mind or the like? I did a quick search but didn't come across any previous thread topics.

...did OP ask you for advice on what he should do on his holidays? He asked for some specific information. Don't be a c*** QGL, it doesn't suit you.

I like the part where he's an established part of this [computer gaming] community, and yet, the same forum is literally telling him to 'go outside'.

Also Zak, being a c*** isn't suiting you very well.

I sent emails to a few places but they all failed to respond after a few business days (I didn't expect them to, really) so I called them up today.

The two companies below seemed to have the best constructed websites and the most amount of actual information available online. They both offer various services such as delivery and collection although this was of no particular value to me.

Mr Rentals has a minimum 1 month rental duration, but otherwise I think prices per week remain about the same in line with those on their site.

Hire Intelligence offers rental durations as low as 1 week, which is quite nice.

Unfortunately, both of these companies were lacking hardware that met my requirements. To be specific they both had machines which were recent enough to meet my baseline requirements in terms of CPU/RAM, but which were unsuitable in the GPU department. The newest machines were laptops rather than desktops (which wasn't ideal to begin with) and the only laptops which came with decent graphics solutions were focused on the workstation market - IE, Quadro or other chips. They had some higher end workstation deskstops (multi CPU xeon boxes, etc) however neither company offered consumer grade graphics options for their machines.

Bit of a pity really, as if they'd just had a decent optional video card I could rent with the rest of the box, I would've been set. FWIW if I had a spare video card that was decent enough I might have still gone for a rental (assuming they'd let me install it).

Interestingly enough both companies indicated that my query about renting a gaming computer is something that seems to come up fairly often. So it appears that there is some market demand for this kind of arrangement, even if it isn't a market they are interested in right now.

By the way - to those who suggested I do something other than play games while in Brisbane, there's a few things you should know:

1. I was born in Brisbane. I moved to Sydney a few years ago for study/work purposes. Though I have no interest in tourist stuff in any case. I went to QGL lans back in the old days for whatever that's worth.

2.I was planning to fly up in order to play guild wars 2 at launch (along with some other games, later on) with one of my best friends. His parents are friends with mine as well - they're like an aunt an uncle to me. We've been mates for around 15 years now (have played a s***load of games together too). I haven't had a chance to catch up with him and his family in a couple of years so was gonna try and do a few things at once.

Not sure what I'm gonna do now. Things are getting a bit complicated and in the end I may have to cancel the trip, or postpone visiting for later. Perhaps what minimal information I gathered here will be useful for someone else.

Thanks for the replies everyone, and sorry for the wall of text.

last edited by icewyrm at 19:30:47 21/Aug/12