Conundrum...

[julianhj]

My parents' PC went wibble last week, wouldn't boot up at all, just a blue screen with some guff about a hard disc error. It's about six years old, a Dell Dimension 5150 - a P4 3.0 Ghz system with 1GB RAM. It came with Windows XP, and has been dog-slow for some time, despite my best efforts to clean it up.

The machine is used 95% of the time for internet browsing, the remaining usage being a bit of light office work and some photo storage.

As the hard disc is clearly on the way out, I'm considering either sticking one of my old 320GB drives in and doing a fresh install. I've been considering Windows 7 as well, as it made a fair difference to my last machine, which was a similar vintage.

Given that a new machine seems an unnecessary expense, I've been giving thought to buying a new 60GB SSD and W7HP. Is it worth it for a machine of this age? Will there be a noticeable difference over an old mechanical HDD and XP? Would an extra 1GB RAM make it all the more worthwhile, as I can scavange some from my old (unused) machine.

 

[julianhj]

I'd considered a brand new machine, but that would have meant doubling the budget to somewhere north of £300 to get away with something half-way decent.

The RAM is DDR2 PC2-5300. It has 2x512MB currently, and two free slots. My old machine has 3x1GB Corsair PC2-4200 - I realise this is not quite as fast (533Mhz vs 667Mhz I think), but as they are both 240 pin configuration and 1.8v, would it be worth sticking say 2 of these 1GB Corsairs in, to give a total of 3GB RAM? Purgatory, if you do have anything you can chuck my way, it'd be much appreciated!

It looks like the CPU fitted is 64-bit compatible, so I think I'm going to buy a retail version of W7HP as per Socrates' suggestion.

I think I'll donate one of my smaller drives for the time being.

Thanks for your replies.