Need advice on old PC - to spend or not to spend?!

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?

"Ben" wrote in message ...
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?
---

My suggestion, is you should buy a new computer, a Nice 1ghz+ pc,
then, use this PC (the one that you described above) as a hardware
firewall for your home. You'll learn a lot, have fun, and you'll have
a nice, fast new computer.

"Ben" wrote in message ...
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?

If all she's going to be doing is email and web searches, I don't know
whether it's worth upgrading at all (especially if she's on dialup). I
have technophobic parents and their 6yr old celeron is still about as
much as they need. If you want to give it a little boost, an extra 128
mb of RAM (probably SDRAM ??) should show a huge improvement with
winME, and if you want to buy an old 64MB card for cheap, that should
be plenty.

"Ben" wrote in message ...
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?

First you should find out whether or not the computer will read a
256mb dimm.
or if it can only read up to 128mb.
check how many memory dimms sockets are available,then check around on
the internet to see the memory requirements such as speed(nano
secs)pin count.
If it can only read 128mb then it may only read the one slot,or 2 64mb
dimms.
if its capable of reading 256mb then 2 128mb dimms will work.
Increasing the memory will increase the overall productivity of your
computer,and in most instances is cheaper than upgradeing the
processor.
As far as the graphics,8mb isnt all that bad unless your useing a high
resolution monitor,and game software that uses alot of directx
componants.
it is more than likely capable of handling a better graphics card,make
sure that your processor can support a high quality graphics card
before investing in a new card.

Is the computer too slow right now? From those specs it sounds like it might
be okay as is.

If it is too slow:

Websurfing doesn't depend on the video card so upgrading that wouldn't make
a difference.

More RAM would definitely help, especially if the user will have multiple
web pages open at a time. 128 MB is often insufficient, 256 MB should be
enough.

Your CPU might not be fast enough, depending on its clock speed. I believe
PII's can range from 233mhz to 450mhz. 233mhz is probably on the lower end
of usability, but 450 would be fine for websurfing.

Run AdAware (or something similar) to get rid of spyware/adware which slows
down any system. And a fresh install of windows always speeds things up.

"Ben" wrote in message
...
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?

No need to get a new computer. The PII will work fine, if you either
clean up the current Windows installation of any spyware or viruses,
or you do nice clean reinstall windows. A good site to visit for a
product that can help you with this and improving the overall
performance of your computer is www.tilde.us. I've had success with
it on my PII, with both Windows 95 and 98.

The suggestions about adding another 128 MB of RAM are good ones.
It's the best investment you can make. You have a good computer there
for your mother's computing needs, as described. It would be silly to
spend a lot of money on a new computer.



"Ben" wrote in message ...
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?

"Ben" wrote in message ...
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?

it depends if its factory sealed if not yeah my computer os old
6 years old but it perrs like a kitten...just add some more ram and
reinstall me
people dont like win me i have it works great.....defrag once a month
and get adaware it free...

specs
440 bx motherboard
p2 mmx
cdrw-dvd-cdr
128mb pro raideon 7200
512ram
7.gig drive c
80. gig drive
windows me
zonealarm firewall
cable modem 1900kb sec