Let me start by confessing an absolute lack of knowledge when it comes to PC's.

Although I use AutoCAD, Microsoft Outlook, Project, Excel etc every day at work I have no idea what's actually inside the white box under my desk.

I bought a Tiny 550Mhz Pentium III with a DVD Drive, a CD read / writer and a 25GB hard drive, no graphics card and a basic sound card in 1999 (ish). It's running Windows 98 and up until recently worked perfectly, for what I needed.

Recently it's started locking up / going all blue screen of doom at me and now won't let me open word without warning of low resources. Seems to surf net OK though?

Now I have upgraded to AutoCAD 2005 at work I want to run this at home too, so I'm not shifting back and forth all the time.

Question is do I open the case, replace the motherboard and chip for something faster or chuck it and buy a new one?

I have a nice big Monitor, the DVD has only been used to install software and the CD-R has been used a couple of times. Keyboard, mouse, scanner and webcam all OK so I'd look to keep them?

Any advice or suggestions gratefully received.

Mike

550Mhz is getting a bit long in the tooth now... I had a 333Mhz which was having the same problems.

I upgraded to a Dell 2.6GHz, 17 flat panel monitor, 160 GB hard disc, DVD & CD R, plus XP, printer/scanner/copier for £446 inclusive of delivery.

For software depends what company your work for. Mine has a deal with microsoft where anysoftware I have on my PC at work I can order another copy for home for just a shipping fee of about £20...

Thanks Shades, but £400 plus is just going to come off the build budget, and my peripherals are all OK. Would Dell just sell the box without the rest of the stuff?

Mike

Definately sounds like its time to upgrade, not punting for business but we do a base unit only deal with a 2.4 / 2.8 ghz CPu, 256 Mb RAM,120 Gig HDD and a DVd / CD re writer combo for £199 inc VAT plus delivery. For software you might want to check out the microsoft action pack program, if you can meet the criteria you can get a full set of ms software desktop and server products for 199 a year.
Also check out free alternatives. We have a lot of business cutomers now using Open Office from www.openoffice.org and its free and will read and write in common microsoft formats for campatability.

Mac

"Would Dell just sell the box without the rest of the stuff?"

I don't know, I was after the flat pannel monitor to free up some desk space, and Having the scanner/printer and copier also means I can free up more.

to be honest once you start upgrading it can just cost you more in the end, from the spec you''ve listed, the minimum your going to have to buy is:-

motherboard
Processor
Memory
Hard Drive.

that depends on the motherboard you buy having on board sound+grpahics.

maybe a case/psu depending on your power supply.

I went through this and found that it was better to buy a new system and sell of the bits from the old one.

[Edited on 1/6/05 by rayward]

How about a 2nd hand refurbished PC? You can get a decent 1.2ghz or so, 256mb ram and 40gb hard drive pc refurbished for a around £150.

Adam

linky


i bought my machine from these blokes
very good it is too and cheap

A 550 mgHz can still be fine in todays world if it has enough memory (256 to 512mb) and a decent graphics car. The fault on you PC might be very simple -- duff fan/heatsink, power supply, hd fault or just a virus. However other than memory it is almost impossible to upgrade.

If you want a simple upgrade it is fairly easy to get a cheap "all in one" motherboard with grasphics and sound onboard -- some boards can even be found with a Duron Processor factory fitted.
I strongly suspect your Tiny case won't be up to the job (I don't have a high opinnion of Tiny) so you will need a decent mini tower case --- I strongly recommend Lian-Li alloy cases (sometimes Maplin have them on special) -- only downside is you usually have to buy a psu as Lian-Li don't supply the case with one fitted. You will also need new memory to suit the motherboard get 512mb as this is the max that win98 can use.

I usually buy parts from http://www.pless.co.uk but the site seems to be down .
Dell also have some realy attractive deals at the sub 400 pound mark BUT watch out for a whacking great delivery charge.

[Edited on 2/6/05 by britishtrident]

I don't have a high opinion of Tiny or Time for that matter.

HP - sucks more!

I agree with Trident - don't give up with what you've got until you've done some checking.

For example, have you defragmented your disk drive lately? Windoze is very bad for spreading its files across the whole disk in a disorganised and untidy way, until it gets to the point where the system can't cope. If you haven't done this recently (or never done it!) then this is a good step.

Next, how much space do you have left on your disk? The system will start to complain if you've not much room left so, if this is the case, clear out some old stuff onto a CD-R.

These steps might help a lot!

David