to upgrade or not to upgrade; that is the question

hey all,
i'm running a HP Pavillion 8120, Pentium 1, 32mb Ram, windowzzzzz 95. It's been riddled with problems since it was bought in 96. We've been thru 2 hard-drives, 2 cd roms, which equated to alot of re-formatting and lose of data... I'm thinkin along the lines of upgrading, but is there much point, would it be cheaper to buy a new system all together?

I mostly use the computer for school work (I mostly use excel & word), image editing & scanning, internet & email and playing mp3s and movies. (yes your typical teenager).

If anyone has any suggestions, it would be much appreciated.

Tonies R.

NB: youth rates apply

From your specs, I'd have to say that upgrading and buying a new system in your case would be exactly the same thing. You'd need to upgrade practically everything.

Hi Tonies

If your monitor, keyboard, etc, are ok get a new box only.

Lots of stores do 'upgrade' deals where they supply a new case and all the internals. To save cost you may even be able to reuse your existing cd rom.

Have a look at the hardware list John Calvert has posted down the page and check them out.

Murray

Hi,

We've just 'upgraded' my husband's computer for less than $1,000. Basically it was a new box, motherboard, CPU, Ram and Hard drive. Keyboard as well for $20 (saved mucking around with adaptors).

We reused the network card, CD Rom, monitor and software. We could have saved on the hard drive but I want to reuse the old computer elsewhere. (It wasn't powerful enough for certain new software but still works).

Often when you come to 'upgrade' an older machine you need to replace most things anyway. Even the cases have improved dramatically.

List the components that you have got and see which ones need replacing.

Just another point, if you buy a motherboard and cpu from the same supplier this will entitle you to also purchase OEM software. It may still be possible to get an OEM Win98 2ED package.
Cheers

on the other foot, you can get a whole new machine and use the old one as a backup (lan perhaps) or give it to the kids /parents to use.

If I was in this situ and being a teenager, short of cash, I'd scrape $500 together and buy a 2nd hand box which would easily get you quadruple the system including at least w98