How much computer do I need?

[mudman]

For anyone looking on the Dell Outlet site, make sure to check the business side too. I have a sweet Vostro (considered a 'business/education' model) laptop coming and only paid $419 for a nice setup.

[BRPORSCHE]

Also AAA discounts on dell.com/outlet. I have been dying to find a dell vostro 1310 for around 450 with xp and an Intel chip.

[jyl]

Get a second 500 GB external drive to back up your sons music. Would be terrible if a disk crash wiped out his music.

[nostatic]

mac

[TimT]

I do have another question...I understand my computer has 2 RAM slots. Do I just install the new RAM in the empty slot or do I replace the original RAM? It sounds like a relatively easy isntallation -- the hardest part is going to be getting to the back of my computer because of where I have placed it

You can just put another memory stick in the open slot and add the existing memory...

Or you can take that 128 stick you have a skip it across a pond.... and install more memory in the available slots.. (usually in pairs two, or four)


You probably could use two 512s..email your pc mfg tech support and find out the max for your pc..

[masraum]

I did a quick search online for "memory upgrade Dell Dimension 4500" and found this link. It's probably correct, but you may want to check a couple of places or even dell.com http://www.edgetechcorp.com/memory/upgrade.asp?cid=18805

If it's to be believed, you can fit 1Gig (2 x 512Mb). I'd definitely do it.

$20 is a decent price. Get 2.

[JavaBrewer]

1 GB is still pretty skimpy but if that's all your current motherboard supports than do it. It will make a huge difference compared to 128 MB. After that I would look into a new system as already posted by several folks...except for Todd...dude...

[89911]

I just got an HP from Sam's. 8gb memory and 1,000Gb hard drive. This is needed to run Vista 64bit. We upgraded my old computer for my son to 4 gb memory which is the maximum for Vista 32 bit home premium. The memory upgrade from Crucial for 4 GB was only $50. A great deal. Vista does have its issues. Basically, it is counter intuitive and makes simply procedures far too complicated, but on whole, it works fine. My son downloaded a Beta version of Windows 7 which seems better organized. The Vista offers many upgrades over XP, so don't let everyone tell you that XP is better, just more time tested. The system I got from Sam's included a 25" monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and the cpu mentioned abover for $1200. I priced in online from HP and it was almost double in cost. If you have a membership, Costco or Sam's are great buying options.

[FastCarFan]

Originally Posted by TimT

You can just put another memory stick in the open slot and add the existing memory...

Or you can take that 128 stick you have a skip it across a pond.... and install more memory in the available slots.. (usually in pairs two, or four)


You probably could use two 512s..email your pc mfg tech support and find out the max for your pc..

Last night I ordered two 512s &, as Tim suggested, I will throw away the 128.

Thanks again for all of the help. I will post a follow-up after the install to let you know how it worked.

Doing the math makes me very hopeful for greatly improved performance.

(512 x 2)/128 = 1,024/128 = 8. Wish I could increase the performance of my 911 8x for $40!

[TerryH]

It doesn't work exactly that way, you will see improvement, but in reality you're still lacking enough to alleviate some waiting. One thing you can't ever have enough of is RAM. A machine bought today will have 4 or 8 GB on average. You can't hardly buy a desktop computer with less than 2 GB.

First time I purchased RAM was in 1991, $50 for a single MB stick, that's megabyte. My 386sx came with 2 with room for 4.... whoopee!. A GB at those prices would cost $50,000. My first hard drive was 103mb and all my friends ogled it. Consensus was it would never get filled. Only a couple years later I had golf games that took twice that space.

Early computing was expensive and hard to keep current. Things are noticably slowing down as one would imagine. Technology gets exponentionally harder to improve upon as things get smaller and smaller to fit on the same wafers.

[FastCarFan]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Pelican friends!

My son & I installed 2x512 RAM this evening & the improvement is amazing. I ordered the RAM from Dell. They said it would take 3-5 days, but it took 7 days because of some sort of problem. I should have bought locally, but they are installed & we are very, very pleased.

I thought I should provide an update. Thanks a lot for the help. The Pelican community is amazing.

Have a great day!

[ruf-porsche]

Originally Posted by nostatic

mac

big mac

[masraum]

Excellent news! The resulting change in your user experience should be pretty phenomenal. Your previous 128MB was really aspiring to be as virile as a 98 pound weakling. 1 Gig on an XP box with a decent processor when used primarily for documents and web surfing should be plenty for a couple of years. If you wanted to do heavy duty graphics/image/video editing or play the hottest, newest games, you'd be hating life, but for the web and offic, you're good to go.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by TerryH

It doesn't work exactly that way, you will see improvement, but in reality you're still lacking enough to alleviate some waiting. One thing you can't ever have enough of is RAM. A machine bought today will have 4 or 8 GB on average. You can't hardly buy a desktop computer with less than 2 GB.

First time I purchased RAM was in 1991, $50 for a single MB stick, that's megabyte. My 386sx came with 2 with room for 4.... whoopee!. A GB at those prices would cost $50,000. My first hard drive was 103mb and all my friends ogled it. Consensus was it would never get filled. Only a couple years later I had golf games that took twice that space.

Early computing was expensive and hard to keep current. Things are noticably slowing down as one would imagine. Technology gets exponentionally harder to improve upon as things get smaller and smaller to fit on the same wafers.

Yeah, my first PC was a Tandy 1000 TX w/286 on an XT bus running at 8MHz. It had 640k of RAM. My first hard drive was 32 MB. I think I have a calculator with more RAM than that hard drive space. I've got a relatively measly system by todays standards with 4 Gigs of RAM and 500 Gigs of HD Space, but it does what I need quite well. I only paid $270 for the Comp (already had a good monitor).