S.Heenan wrote:
Ben wrote:
I have a very old PC (in computer years!), its about 4 years old. Its
a PII MMX. It only has an onboard video card (8Mb), do you believe
that?!... And 128Mb RAM.

Any advice on whether it's worth changing to 256Mb RAM and dropping
in a 128Mb (or even a 64Mb) video card? Will it even handle the
upgrade?

It will be used by my mum for home purposes, probably just surfing
the net and emailing. So, worth the hassles or get a newer PC?


A PII 300 with 256MB of RAM and a 4GB HDD will run Windows 2000 well
and Windows 98 better still. A fresh install of the OS may also be in
order. Considering the use it's likely to have from Mum, I wouldn't
spend much trying to upgrade it.

I've just put a PII 450Mhz with 128MB SDRAM and a 1x 8MB AGP card, 20GB HDD
from parts I was given, with a fresh install of 98SE the thing flies! A few
tweaks like a fixed swapfile of 256MB set up immediately after the OS
install so it's really close to the start of the drive (outside edge, faster
access).

Reading these responses I think there are a few young guys here who seem to
think they have to have the latest and greatest to surf the net or write an
email. This is for the guy's mother FFS! It's a perfectly fine PC for the
required use. You guys are spoilt. sits in rocking-chair on the porch I
remember when going from 4MB RAM to 8MB cost me $100 per MB and the machine
still took all day to do anything.

Of course, for my own use I have a Tbred B running at 200Mhz x 10.5 for
2.1Ghz on an nForce2 Ultra 400 board (that kicks P4 butt up to 3Ghz), 1024MB
dual-channel RAM, 128MB graphics card etc. etc. etc. I'm a bit of a gamer
(on a budget), this guy's mother isn't I think.

It's all about perspective and not who can **** the furthest. After all, you
only need to get it into the bowl.

Geta grip, there are some perfectly fine, functional machines that people
are trashing out of ego. Filling our land-fills and generally wasting
resources.
--
~misfit~