[Joeaksa]

Len,

What speed is your computer? How much memory and how large is the hard drive? Assume you are running W98 on it?

I really hate XP but its the system of choice these days. I get a computer and format it then put W2000 on the hard drive as its a better system for me.

Do not work for Dell (used to fly him and he knows what he is doing!) but they make a really nice machine, and more importantly, they stand behind their products.

Look here: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

They have a descent machine for $500 and change with a free flat panel monitor and free shipping. They even throw in a printer for free, so its a nice deal. If you do not want the printer you can delete it and get the price under $500.

Do not spend the bux to get a faster processor if its just for a home system. If you want to upgrade get more memory (the above units usually have only 256 and I would go with 512 min) or a larger hard drive. I would upgrade it to a single 512 meg memory chip so that you still have one memory slot available to later upgrade your memory if you wish.

Three years is about the best you can expect to get out of a computer. You could upgrade it but your limitation is your power supply and its already at its max now, so I would not spend any extra on this old machine. You can keep it and network it with a newer machine. This way you can use the old one as storage and backup and let the kids play games on it.

Joe A