Have you tried this on your computer?

http://www.xtra-pc.com/

As near as I can tell it's a flash drive with Linux OS on it. This will not increase RAM and I'm hard-pressed to see how it can increase speed of operations, however. So playing movies, and all of the memory intensive stuff will be just as slow as it was on that old computer.

My take on it, as that I see it as having dubious or having marginal merit and costly. Maybe others may view it differently.

It costs $14.99 on a DVD or $9.99 as a download. You can run it straight off the DVD, or a pen drive (not supplied). You can install the Linux version it comprised on a hard drive, or not, as you choose. Techie types can get everything they need to do this for free. You would need to know what to get, and how to make a bootable DVD or pen drive. It is aimed at non-technical people, and includes (allegedly) perpetual support (24/7 365 days a year) by email, SMS or (in the US) an 888 phone number. I guess some people may think $15 is not too much to get some use out of an older PC with a missing hard drive and/or no Windows disk. It is no more than what you can get as a Linux "live DVD" for free.

I had been thinking it could be much like Iola's System Mechanic.

It is nothing like Iolo System Mechanic, which is a Windows application of dubious utility, advertised as a "PC tune up".

xtraPC is a $15 Linux operating system with a bunch of freely available applications, all of which you can get elsewhere for nothing.

I am a computer illiterate. Thanks people.

I understand that sometimes Linux can be less bloated and sluggish than a Microsoft OS.

(Although I've found Windows 8 to be pretty nimble.)

It's cheap enough, I am giving it a try sometime in the week. It's only money.

Hi Edgar, it's just a Linux machine on a Thumb Drive. All they've done is package the otherwise free software on a Thumb Drive for you and sell it. The price seems very reasonable (if you don't know how to make one yourself), given that you are also essentially buying a Thumb Drive.

Are you trying to solve a particular problem or are you just wondering what this is?

If you had an old windows machine that was corrupted in some way, and just wanted to do some basic computing activities this might be a good solution. It would be like installing a clean operating system onto your machine without actually having to install anything.

My computer frequently freezes, has long running scripts, flash crashes -

Why would you want to use linux on a usb drive? Why not just install linux on the hard drive?

For the price they're asking I think it's worth a try.

Sure. I would just waste the money on trivialities anyway.

Exactly. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

You can do it for free (well the cost of a usb stick). Try

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

I liked using System Mechanic (when I had an actual working computer at home). I guess it deluded me into thinking it actually did stuff to keep my computer running smoother (a decent defrag program, etc...).

Whatever this Linux OS is, I doubt it's similar to System Mechanic. I can't see any reason nonprogrammers would have for a dual boot system.

They have 16GB and 32GB, for ten bucks more. Do I need the 32?

It depends on whether you are going to try to store 16Gb of files on that USB Key. The OS they have installed on the USB Key probably only takes up a small portion of the 16Gig in the first chip, leaving the remaining space as extra Disk Space on that key.

The 32Gig version probably just gives you more disk space to store stuff in.

Remember that when you use the USB Key as your Operating System you will not have access to the local disk drives (at least not without risking damaging the data on them), so the only place you will have to store files (photo's, pdf's, programs, etc) will be on that key.

For the extra $10 I think I would get the 32Gig key. That way if you really like it you will have some disk space to grow into for a few years. But it all depends on how important that $10 is to you.

An OS is an "operating system". Windows is an operating system. Linux is an operating system. The only reason I can suppose anybody might wonder if xtraPC is like System Mechanic is that both are aimed at people with tired or problematic Windows installations. System Mechanic offers to try to fix Windows, whereas xtraPC would ditch it completely and substitute a version of Linux, complete with a whole different way of doing things and a new set of applications.