[textbookman]

I have a 7 year old Micron. It came with a 1.2 mhz Athlon- A1200AMS3B processer and DDR 266 ram. I would like to speed it up a litle and I do not want to buy a new computer. I do nto want to spend a lot of money right now due to being downsized from my job.

My questions are:

1. Can I install any of the faster socket 462 (A) Athlon chips and would it make difference?
2. Can I upgrade to faster RAM maybe DDR 400 and would it make a difference?
3. If I do either of these, will I need to replace the power supply- OEM 250 watts.
4. Harddrive is IBM Deskstar ATA/IDE 60 GB 7200 rpm. Would it behoove me to upgrade to a larger/faster drive and are there any that are better than the rest? Also, what type of HD would replace an ATA/IDE?

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hi, welcome to geekstogo
thanks for asking, my hobby is relife'ing computers, but what with the price of news bits for old computers, the price is often too prohibitive, for example ordering new 256rams bars is a costly shock, and in a short while the computer is so old that once again one is facing this problem so rather than upgrading the hardware I always start by upgrading the operating system, meaning linux because the thing that often holds back the performance of a computer is both the heaviness of the os and ones protection of it by something like Norton, so that then leads to the next question "what does one want to do with the computer", let me know if this idea interests you, if not I will let someone else advise you about hardware but that sounds costly

[fleamailman]

hi, welcome to geekstogo
thanks for asking, my hobby is relife'ing computers, but what with the price of news bits for old computers, the price is often too prohibitive, for example ordering new 256rams bars is a costly shock, and in a short while the computer is so old that once again one is facing this problem so rather than upgrading the hardware I always start by upgrading the operating system, meaning linux because the thing that often holds back the performance of a computer is both the heaviness of the os and ones protection of it by something like Norton, so that then leads to the next question "what does one want to do with the computer", let me know if this idea interests you, if not I will let someone else advise you about hardware but that sounds costly

[textbookman]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually the cost might not be too prohibitive.

I can get a new Athlon XP Socket A 2.1ghz processor with a 400 mhx FSB for about $60 including shipping. The Ram would be about $100 for 2 gb. If I went with a new HD it would be about $70 for a 250 gb SATA Seagate Barracuda with 16 mb buffered memory. The powersupply would be less than $60 for 500 watts. All in all, if all of this would work, it would cost about $300 which is a lot less than the price of a new comnputer.

I could go with Linux too. As far as protection, I use the free software like AVG, avast, Lavasoft Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D.

I think part of the reason that a lot of OTC computers run slow is all the appertenant drivers and applications that are OEm on them. If I go with a new HD I would install Windows XP from the Microsoft box (not from the original software that came with the computer) without all the Micron drivers and secret little applications.

The question is, do applications like MS Office run on Linux? Is RedHat the best bet? Do I need to dowload Virus Protection and Spyware protection if I use Linux and FireFox?

[fleamailman]

well that sounds like a lot of money to me if one adds the price of the XP license, and the officeworks license(if you don't already have the office license in CD form), but how about paying nothing for the moment, let me show you this link(below) the idea is just download, burn and boot on it, just seeing if you have all the drivers. that is before even thinking about installing, it is called the live CD test something that windows can't do(no nasty surprises of finding that after installing that x or y driver is missing like on windows because one has not yet install the system to the hard drive), if all the drivers are recognized once you are up and running from ram in the live CD test, then and only then I suggest installing, because there are many other linuxes to choose from if some driver is missing.

OK supposing the drivers are no problem in the test, and that you have then installed Mint linux on the system, the first thing you will notice is that it is very like windows in that there is firefox, openoffice and other things that give a windows look without trying at all to be windows. openoffice works perfectly with both work and excel, I use them both,

Protection, well simply I have never seen any malware and therefore there is no need for protection, for fun see if you can find a malware problem for linux in a google search or take a look on the Mint linux forum but basically one is not running hidden things on a hidden system that is while the lockup procedure is better under linux

let me know what you think, good luck and save you money

http://www.geekstogo...ux-t187713.html

[trnstar]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually the cost might not be too prohibitive.

I can get a new Athlon XP Socket A 2.1ghz processor with a 400 mhx FSB for about $60 including shipping. The Ram would be about $100 for 2 gb. If I went with a new HD it would be about $70 for a 250 gb SATA Seagate Barracuda with 16 mb buffered memory. The powersupply would be less than $60 for 500 watts. All in all, if all of this would work, it would cost about $300 which is a lot less than the price of a new comnputer.

I could go with Linux too. As far as protection, I use the free software like AVG, avast, Lavasoft Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D.

I think part of the reason that a lot of OTC computers run slow is all the appertenant drivers and applications that are OEm on them. If I go with a new HD I would install Windows XP from the Microsoft box (not from the original software that came with the computer) without all the Micron drivers and secret little applications.

The question is, do applications like MS Office run on Linux? Is RedHat the best bet? Do I need to dowload Virus Protection and Spyware protection if I use Linux and FireFox?

If you buy those things you will have to upgrade your motherboard as well, increasing the price another $100 (at least, it depends on which motherboard you buy). I am not familiar with linux but from what I've heard, there aren't virus and malware problems like there are on windows. I downloaded ubuntu linux and installed it on one of my old rigs just to try it out and see what it was like, and I found it a bit difficult to get used to. Also, when I tried to install drivers for a netgear wireless usb adapter I couldn't figure out how to do anything!

[fleamailman]

true, but what does someone lose here in that textbookman can always follow his original path should things not be to his liking whereas if he just buys stuff he will stuck on a dead end system that will become as unsupported as windows98 is now not to mention the malware problem, besides there are near 400 different distros out there to choose from as MINT linux is a starter linux as I mentioned but it is very complete in my view,

Agreed, linux takes a bit of learning but how far one learns the system is up to the learner, but that is not the same for windows as it source files are hidden