Desktop Advice

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With the horse power available today and the very low demands you are putting on your computer, I would advise you to go cheap and get a very big hard drive and a lot of RAM. Everything you buy today will have a lot more processing speed than your old machine so you should be faster, but what is slowing your existing computer is probably a host of programs and apps that have been installed over the years. You might save some money by backing up all your personal stuff, formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. That said, given what you want, I would shop the Wal Mart special on Black Friday. This machine has 2Gig RAM and a 500M hard drive for under $300 since you don't need a monitor or speakers. Best Buy also had some nice deals on ASUS machines. ASUS is a major Asian electronics company with a lot of experience making components. They've been trying to crack the US market with high quality machines priced right. Any hard core gamer or business user would scoff at these recommendations, but for a family on a budget who wants to surf and download pictures, these are solid machines. Be sure to remove the hard drive from your existing machine and install it in your new one. That gives you all your data and an easy way to backup stuff.

Thanks engineer for the advice. Sounds Good. Should I try to clean up the hard drive first? Thanks for taking the time to answer my question so thoroughly. I appreciate it. John Vozab

What's the specs on that ol' PC? Sounds like you just need to clean it up. Either do a format C: or clean out all the cookies with some free AVG software, disable all the unwanted programs in MSconfig ..etc.

If you are absolutely committed to getting a new machine, then backup your hard drive and reinstall the operating system. It takes about an hour. Your machine will likely be running as fast as the day you bought it. You will also have lost all the little goodies you've come to know and love like the latest upgrades to the Flash viewer, the newest I-tunes version, etc. If that works, you are set and a few hundred to the good. If that still doesn't meet your needs, then new computer and nothing lost. (On the new computer, you are still going to have to get all those goodies.) How to reinstall your operating system guide.