Help! I dont know what to do...

[tbeck]

Hello,
I recieved a hand me down computer for my graduation. its a Dell Inspiron 4000. Windows ME (yuck), pentium 3, 128 mb RAM, dvd rom drive, ect, I would like to know what I should do with it... I have money to upgrade it but im not ging to buy a new one.

I would like some help because i am new to this.

thanks

 

[mesarectifier]

Pay someone to take it away? Nah, that's not helpful, but seriously, it's maybe worth a twenty on eBay?

Any money spent upgrading that system would be money better spent thrown down a well.

 

[SidVicious]

The only difference being that throwing money down a well may grant you wishes if you're the superstitious kind...

 

[iterations]

Use it for a while and see if it meets your needs. Then come back here and describe where you think it is lacking, and what you want to do, and folks here will explain possible upgrades, or if something simply isn't possible. It is likely many things won;t be possible as it is a rather old machine.

Best of luck!

 

[Cybercraig]

See if you can find some cheap memory for it and upgrade to at least 512K. Then load XP on it. It should be at least usable then. Check E-Bay for memory and make sure you get compatible stuff.
:roll:

 

[Scout]

Hummm... if it was me, I'd spring for $20 to put another 128 meg stick of memory in there and then use it a while to see if you can live with it. Like everyone says, what you spend here is pretty much down the drain.

 

[rodney_ws]

Perhaps you could use it to learn Linux?

 

[tbeck]

hmmm... that doesnt sound too good... im not used to working with windows other than in school, i run a mac at home, i was hoping to be able to atleast make this work to todays standards... but according to you guys thats not possible...

 

[Scout]

Depends on what you call "today's standards"! That computer will surf the web and do word processing and spreadsheet work just fine... well, at least sort of fine - with ME you're always subject to crashes... But it's capable of doing that sort of thing. Games or multimedia? You can pretty much forget it!

I recommend adding memory because while 128 meg will run ME, it will run faster with 256 due to less disk swapping.