Should I upgrade computer?

stphnstevey

I currently have a Dell Inspiron D933L, 128MB RAm, Pentium III processor - 6yrs old tower running Windows Me.

It sometimes takes 3 attempts to boot and can freeze commonly

I have seen a Quad Core with 2GB RAM on Tesco for £300

This is a fair bit of money for me though

Should I bite the bullet and upgrade?

f1charlie

It's probably not worth spending any money on your existing system, but if you have the Windows CD it would be worth formatting your hard drive and doing a fresh install to rule out any software problems and it may make it seem like a new system!

TechTerry

£300 for a quad core and 2GB ram, sounds like a good deal and you will defo see the performance change, i noticed it from a 1GB ram on P4 to a dual core with 2GB Ram, so im sure from a p3 to quad core, you will defo see a great improvement.

Defo no point in upgrading your old one.

Edit: AS f1 SAID, if you do not have the moeny, try a reformat and your computer will be like as if you brought it from the shop. Trust me, when you get to see the speeds of a modern computer you can't go back.

Hungerdunger

It all depends on your requirements. Do you intend doing a lot of gaming? Are you running short of hard disk space? If not, go with f1charlie's recommendation of a re-install. The one thing I'd disagree with him on, is the possibility of spending money on it. With memory now so cheap, you may find that doubling or even quadrupling your memory would give you a noticeable improvement in performance. You can go to https://www.crucial.com and that site will advise on how much memory you can install and how much it will cost.

evilgoose

I'd agree with f1charlie. If you computer does what you want it to do - but you are finding it crashing now, i'd suggest formatting and reinstalling, if you feel confident in doing that. (make sure you've got all your driver discs 1st!)

Keep and eye open, if you computer has got free memory slots then you might be able to upgrade your RAM, that will help speed things up for you.

You could also try some of the disk tools within windows, such as defrag and scandisk.

If only this was a few weeks ago I'd have sent you some more RAM for free as we recently threw (sent for recycling) loads and loads of memory, I always find it a bit gutting to scrap working kit.

Before doing anything, if you've got anything on your PC which you cant afford to loose - make sure that you make a backup of them onto CD or floppy etc.

motorguy

Dell are doing a Vostro 200MT base unit, keyboard and mouse, with 2Ghz Dual Core, 160GB HDD, and 2GB RAM for £188 delivered, use it with your current monitor. Check out https://www.dmxdimension.com

You'll think you've died and gone to heaven and still be £112 better off than the quad core - which if you've been using a P3 happily you DONT NEED.

Marty_J

It's a hard question to answer, and it really depends on your circumstances.

If you have £300 burning a hole in your pocket and you don't know what to spend it on, then upgrading your computer would certainly be a good use of the money; 6 years is pretty old for a computer these days and you'll notice a big difference.

If you aren't going to be able to buy food for a month because you bought a new computer, then its probably best to stick with your current one.

TechTerry

pgilc1 wrote: »

Dell are doing a Vostro 200MT base unit, keyboard and mouse, with 2Ghz Dual Core, 160GB HDD, and 2GB RAM for £188 delivered, use it with your current monitor. Check out www.dmxdimension.com

You'll think you've died and gone to heaven and still be £112 better off than the quad core - which if you've been using a P3 happily you DONT NEED.

100% Agree, £188 for that seems amazing, and it be like going to heaven. Might actually pass that onto my sister.

evilgoose

£188 is a cracking deal - if you've got the money you cant go far wrong with that sort of price.

piggeh

I'd recommend getting one second hand if you dont want to spend much - you can pick up something that is still substantially better than what you have for £100 or so. I just sold my pc (64-bit 3200 cpu, 1GB Ram, 300GB hard drive, Tagan PSU etc) for £100 and for any word processing, browsing, even some gaming or photoshopping, it's more than enough. Although, the £188 deal above is pretty damn good value for a new pc with warranty.

ant1979pry

This deal looks great - am about to buy one but just had a couple of questions.

Will mainly be used for Internet, listening to music and playing a couple of OLD time games - Diablo 2 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Have no interest in playing the latest games but wanted to know would the included integrated graphics card be sufficeint for my needs or would it be worth upgrading to the 128mb or 256mb graphics cards?

Many thanks.