Advice Needed Upgrade or Buy a New One

MrHelpful

Hello,

I need some advice. Just returned to my parents house and have realised only recently that the PC they have at home is running Windows 95. The PC is a pentium 2 P233 with a 4GB hard drive. They only want to use it for surfing the net/having cam-to-cam talk with my sis using broadband which they cant use as they have Windows 95 (lol!) current. What should I do... is it cheaper/easier to buy a new PC or could I upgrade this, and if so how do I go about it and how much would it cost? What version of windows allows you to use broadband?? They are literally in the dark with modern techology

Advice appreciated.

marka87uk

Definately buy a new one. Windows XP definately won't work on that, and you really need XP now ...unless they wanted to run Linux which would be more secure and could (only some versions though) run on those (poor) specs.

albertross_2

Broadband will work on W95. USB modems are the only problem area with 95. Does the PC have a network card? If so, you could buy a £40-50 router, and plug it in. The router will give them all added protection, because it has a firewall built in.

Usb support for webcams, and software for using them may be an issue though..

StephenB_2

XP probably will run on that PC (you don't mention how much memory it has, though), see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx for example. I have XP ticking away nicely on a 350MHz PIII with 192 MB of RAM. You don't need much processing power or a recent OS to access a network either, ISTR using a 33MHz 386 with DOS in the past. I don't know anything about webcams.

However, that machine is very slow by modern standards. My advice is not to spend much money on it. I doubt there are many parts in it worth reusing - certainly not the graphics, the motherboard, the memory, the PSU or the hard drive (maybe the case, the 3.5" floppy ...). It must be the best part of ten years old; they are lucky the hard drive or the CPU fan hasn't failed. For a few hundred quid, they could have one of Dell's special offers (watch these forums). They would really notice the difference.

SJB