[TriLUG] OT: 64-bit computing advice

[James Brigman]

On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 08:52 -0400, Brian Henning wrote:
> Hiya Gang,
>    My dad is asking me for advice on upgrading his P-III 750MHz Win98 
> desktop which is gradually grinding to a halt.  It seems that the 
> marketplace is really trying to shove 64-bit desktop computing down our 
> throats (anyone seen an Athlon XP for sale lately?  Or a quality mobo to 

Brian, two suggestions:

1) If the existing machine is in great shape but has wimpy RAM and HDD,
you could upgrade both the RAM and the HDD and see about 20-30% speed
improvements for most tasks. Do the suggested reinstall of Win98 with
the new RAM and HDD, keep the box relatively "clean" with
Ad-aware/Spybot/Antivirus and it might give a couple more years of
service. Total cost less than $200, much less if you have good
scrounging skills. 

A 750Mhz PIII is dated, but I still run a similar laptop as my main
email machine at home just because it's quiet, has a decent LCD screen
and is and low power.

2) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138025

It's a motherboard/CPU combo from NewEgg, about $100. You can:

- reuse your case if it takes an mATX motherboard
- reuse your RAM if it's DDR (probably not if you're upgrading from a
PIII, but DDR is now cheaper than PC133...so two 512 sticks wouldn't
double the price)
- reuse your AGP 4x/8x vid card if you need to
- reuse your drives and/or add a new, fast, big drive
- upgrade your dad to USB 2.0 from USB 1.1
- upgrade your dad to 100mbit ethernet
- has onboard video if you don't have a vid card
- has a modern Socket 754 CPU onboard

You could try reloading Win98 on this motherboard - it comes with a
driver CD that has Win98 drivers, but I'm not sure how well that would
work. You might have to go with WinXP. 

3) You might do only item 1) above, but add a nice LCD screen, new mouse
and keyboard to make the box seem really new. An LCD upgrade can make a
huge difference. 

Know that there are many of us out here who likewise are trying to
provide good performance and value for family members using old HDW and
OS's.

JKB