Dell Optiplex, is it worth upgrading?

chubb3g114

Hi
My wife has just bought a laptop to replace her PC which was playing up and was very slow and crashing quite often. The PC is a Dell Optiplex 745 running Win xp, just wondering if it is worth keeping and using as a spare and upgrading to Win 7 and maybe upgrading the CPU and ram?

chubb3g114

AndyPix

Optiplexes are business grade machines .. But the 745 is very old now, and dell do not release windows 7 drivers for that model.

If it was me, I would do a fresh install of windows xp (assuming u have the disks) and just use it for browsing the web etc when needed.

I wouldn't bother upgrading it, it should be fine for browsing etc with a fresh OS on it.

Hope this helps a bit
Andy

Fightsback

Need to know which version of 745 , what's the Dell service tag ?

Zeitgeist

Oddly enough the 755 and 760 are better machines, as you can upgrade them to the latest Core 2 Quad processor (which did come out in 2008 so latest is a very relative term), but the 745 are limited to Core 2 Duos.

They are well built machines and very reliable and would be a good candidate to try Linux Mint on it to be honest.

chubb3g114

Hi
Thanks for the replies, No disks I'm afraid.
Service tag No. 94SOT2J, Express service code, 19879972651.

chubb3g114

spud17

Make sure you've made a note of any keys for software you have installed, in case you revert to XP.
Have a play with a Linux distro, Mint being the popular choice.
Then decide if it's worth upgrading to Win 7.

p.s. service tag is 94S0T2J

spud17

Zeitgeist is spot on, you may be limited with your processor upgrade options.
I dual boot XP/Mint on an Optiplex 210L, despite having a socket 775 motherboard, it will not run a Pentium E2180, the installed P4 2.8 is probably the fastest supported.

Fightsback

Zeitgeist wrote: »

Oddly enough the 755 and 760 are better machines, as you can upgrade them to the latest Core 2 Quad processor (which did come out in 2008 so latest is a very relative term), but the 745 are limited to Core 2 Duos.

They are well built machines and very reliable and would be a good candidate to try Linux Mint on it to be honest.

chubb3g114 wrote: »

Hi
Thanks for the replies, No disks I'm afraid.
Service tag No. 94SOT2J, Express service code, 19879972651.

chubb3g114

Thought it might be the case, it isn't even C2D the model dates from 2006. It's a Pentium D 925 which means nasty netburst. To give you an idea it's a 95w cpu that's happily thrashed by a modern 2.5w CPU, performance per watt has moved on tremendously in the last 10 years.

Not worth doing anything with to be honest.

chubb3g114

Thanks for the replies, its off to the dump then.

chubb3g114

C_Mababejive

Werent there also issues with the PSUs on some optiplexes?? i bought one cheap off ebay a few years back. It was fine,lasted about two years then the PSU fried..non standard.

London_Ash

Just so you know, Dell will offer you £100 cashback if you trade in for a new machine.

http://www.dell.com/learn/uk/en/ukbsdt1/campaigns/trade-and-save