To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade???

Okay, I have many friends who have purchased PC's for $100 to $150 and they are very, very old PC's but they run. Not much room or anything at all in them. Is it worth it to upgrade them? Some need Processor upgrades to do what they want them to do and all need larger Hard drives and more RAM. They are 133mhz, 96mhz, 386mhz, like that old...They are all running windows 98 though even with very small hard drives, one says it is only 1.5 Gigs...and nearly full only 477MBs left. But it runs good! Nothing on it of course.

So help me out! These are so old I don't know where to start and not sure if it is worth it to try. They want to do CDRW's, Internet (some don't have modems), DVD's, MS Office. I think it is too costly for them I seem to think they need so much, but I am not sure. One's monitor flickers and trembles on the screen, but runs well. I even changed the monitor but it does the same. So I need advice...I have never gone this far with any old ones only my own.

Thanks for any and all suggestions, help, advice, direction...



Anna

 

I do not think they would be worth upgrading.

I believe the main reason would start right at the MotherBoard.

2nd ( but maybe 1st ) reason could be very well be the Power Supply.

To run todays hardware and OS you need no less than a 250 or 300 watt PS. And a 250 could even be marginal.

And I would venture a wild guess that the case itself might limit what can be added.

BillyBob.

 

Anna,

I strongly agree with BillyBob - since everthing connects to the motherboard in some form that is the determining factor with regard to whether it is possible/worth it to upgrade.

By the time one has replaced the motherboard, processor, power supply, case etc, the cost plus the initial investment in the machine can become close to that of a new computer.

I generally advise my family and friends against buying used computers, unless one has a clear understanding of what to look for and realizes how much it would cost to make it suitable for the intended task - watching dvds, buring CDs, games etc.

It would not be the first time that I have seen an unscrupulous seller unload a $15 doorstop to an unaware buyer for $100-$200.

Regards,

ICE

 

Suggestion:

Look through the hardware on them. You may be able to canabalize parts from the smaller ones to make a better main one. By the look of those figures (133, 96, a 386??) you may not have much luck, but may get one that can do the basics OK.
Eg. boost RAM, two or three hard drives, the best modem, etc.

Check the specs, but a CDRW should run on the 133. Then it could be transferred to a newer machine when they get one.

May make them happy if you don't wish to break the news about the "door-stops" .

Matt

Note: if you want to change items with drivers eg. video cards, modems, sound cards etc., get a 'snap' of the drivers with Windriversbackup before you lose them and save them to floppy. Should save time searching for hard-to-find ones.

 

Anna, like so many others have done, don't go down the road of throwing good money after bad. Computer hardware and computing power falls in price so fast that it's almost impossible to justify not buying modern PC technology. For example, maybe you could buy a cpu for $30 that would work in a very old PC but for $45 you could buy a cpu that's light-years ahead in technology and a much better investment of one's hard earned dollars.

Also, we tend to forget that older machines have certain limitations that have been overcome by newer technology. Things we take for granted like using a very large hard drive, plugging in an IDE zip drive and actually having it work and endless other improvements that have been incorporated into chipsets and bioses over the years.

It's a natural urge for PC tinkerers to want to breathe life into an old machine but please do your best to fight it!

 

RE: Upgrade or not?

Thanks to you all for the advice! I was thinking they will need to put too much into these. It turns out I will need to try to do one and the rest can be replaced. That turns out to be the one who spent the most - $150!

So off to my task. I think I will try to talk her out of it but I don't think it will work...I will probably be able to do the salvage thing from the others. Thanks again!!!

~Anna~