Upgrade Or Dump

[gazz]

Hello,

Advice appreciated:

I have an older desktop sitting around the garage for number of years. Six year old son and 15 year old daughter may be able to get some joy from it if I spend a few baht. It needs a new keyboard, monitor and probably ram. Current setup is: Asus A9550GE 256MB video card, Intel Celeron 1.7 ghz CPU, Gigabyte P4 Titan Motherboard 533, 60 GB HDD, DDR 512... Probably put XP on it and no internet access. Educational / games for young guy and wordprocessing for teenager.

Junk or worth spending X? to make a decent kiddie's computer?

thanks in advance

[Spoonman]

If its running happily why not.

DDR ram is still available, about 1450b for 1gb of DDR400.

[Pib]

It should work fine for your mentioned purposes--go for it!!! Make the kids happy. Plus, it might delay them from asking for a new cell phone. Cheers.

[BWPattaya]

Nothing wrong with the specification, it should run fine. XP will be a little slow with 256 RAM, try it first before you upgrade it.

[siamect]

It should work fine for your mentioned purposes--go for it!!! Make the kids happy. Plus, it might delay them from asking for a new cell phone. Cheers.

If you give a kid a used computer it will take a few mS and they have compared it to what the kids next door are running... Get the kids a new computer and take the old one yourself...

[gazz]

You may well be right Siamect. But I could be looking at buying a new one every week unless I supervise the young lad 24/7. He has the makings of a demolition expert!

Cheers and thanks for comments.

[bkk_mike]

Since the main part of what you'd be spending would be on things that would be reusable on a new computer (keyboard and monitor), it seems like a no-brainer to just do up the old computer for the time being.

I'm not saying that they won't want something faster after a while, but you can wait to see how much they're using the computer first before spending on a new base unit. (The fact it's a pretty old Celeron probably means the motherboard, RAM, graphics card (and possibly power supply) would all have to be replaced if you want to do a proper upgrade).

[gazz]

Since the main part of what you'd be spending would be on things that would be reusable on a new computer (keyboard and monitor), it seems like a no-brainer to just do up the old computer for the time being.

I'm not saying that they won't want something faster after a while, but you can wait to see how much they're using the computer first before spending on a new base unit. (The fact it's a pretty old Celeron probably means the motherboard, RAM, graphics card (and possibly power supply) would all have to be replaced if you want to do a proper upgrade).

The graphics card was a more recent purchase so should still be okay. I agree about components being transferable (keyboard / monitor). The motherboard will support up to 3GB of DDR266 (if I can find it). Power supply was replaced twice since I put the stuff in the box so may last a while longer. I guess the downside is the CPU and Motherboard in terms of upgrade potential. Another (bigger) HDD possibly. DVD r/w was fairly new as well so should be fine. By the time I put the coin down for all that, I'll be wondering if I couldn't have just paid a wee bit more and got a lot more bang on a low end but new "family" computer. Better get out and do what I dread--shop around and compare. (Next thing you know, I'll be putting another motherboard and CPU in it...shoulda just left it in the garage.)

[Peterbigeyes]

I would be willing to spend a small amount to restore it so the kids get what joy they can out of it. I say just keep it this way, no need for a super upgrade if all you want for them is simple entertainment or word processing.

[Tywais]

Considering you can get a complete system - computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse for a little over 10,000 Baht seems a new one with current performances would be a better option. That would not be a lot more then you already have to spend to upgrade the existing system (monitor, keyboard/mouse, memory). DDR memory, which is what you indicate you have, has gotten rather expensive now due to smaller availability over DDR2/DDR3.

Example systems - shop4thai

[nikster]

^^^ Yep. Dump.

[gazz]

Dump it, it is!

Too bad kidz...that old hunk o' junk won't even boot. Today I borrowed a keyboard and monitor but no luck. Cleaned ram and vid contacts but bios does not even come up. Bit of corrosion or crud creeping along the edge of the ram slots. I realized while cleaning and checking the machine that it is ten years old already (and has been living in the garage for the past two years!) I'll salvage the graphic card, DVDRW and power supply and junk the rest. Looks like I'll just have to start from scratch with new everything or buy a packaged box.

That said, after some shopping around this afternoon, looks like putting a system together is almost the same cost of a mid-range package. The difference being, I think having control over exactly what you're putting in will result in a better quality, higher performance machine. But maybe I should fix my laptop first...looks like the screen is starting to go judging by the green horizontal line running through the task bar. Seems premature since it's just over two years old. I tested an external monitor and no green line so maybe just a connection problem or...4000 THB for a replacement screen.

Proof that nothing lasts forever and a reminder that even I will expire.