What operating system should I put on my quite old computer

CoastingHatbox

I think by the time you've found some more RAM and sprung for an SSD you have probably made half the outlay you would on a better second hand PC. You can get 4-5 year old Dell Optiplexes with SSD, 8GB RAM and an Intel i5 Processor for not much over £100 on a popular auction site. Considerably less if you are patient. Performance wise, this will be like night and day compared to the computer you currently have.

lonestarfan

I don’t think there are any slots left to add to. I added the extra memory myself quite a few years ago in the last slot I believe. 

lonestarfan

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

Price_Hunter

People still use XP let alone windows? 🤔
although there was a documentary about a guy who had XP for years and had no problems what so ever.
but I can't stand windows.worst oparating system ever made.as someone said to me.!why do you think otherwise are so many certifcaitosn for windows".🤔..personal opinion.
i use Macos, ios, Android and chrome now 
💻📱

lonestarfan

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

Any other suggestions on what to do. Thank you. 

poppellerant

lonestarfan said:

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

Any other suggestions on what to do. Thank you. 

What's the make and model of the computer? Or if it's a DIY build, what motherboard is installed? You could probably take out the existing 1GB and replace it with 2GB to get 4GB.

I would ignore all suggestions of installing Linux.  I'm pretty sure HereToday may be able to assist you transfer your Windows 7 license to Windows 10, avoiding the need to purchase a license at all.  But I could be mistaken and crossing my wires with something and/or somebody else.

J_B

poppellerant said:

 I'm pretty sure HereToday may be able to assist you transfer your Windows 7 license to Windows 10, avoiding the need to purchase a license at all.

As long as someone doesn't come along telling us it's illegal!!! 🤣

CoastingHatbox

Lonestar,

The maximum memory your motherboard will support is 4GB in 4 x 1GB DIMMs. So you could take out the 2x 512MB DIMMs and replace them with 2x 1GB DIMMs.

The type of memory (RAM) you are looking for is: 240-pin PC6200 800 MHz DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM.

On Edit: That should have read "240-pin PC2-6400 800 MHz DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM"
Apologies.

You can search a popular auction site and find sticks for a few pounds. I'd suggest buying a job lot of 4 sticks as I wouldn't be surprised if some of it doesn't work. And you might find that the new RAM is clocked slightly faster than your existing RAM. What I've recommended is the fastest RAM that your motherboard will most likely support. You can keep the old RAM sticks as spares.

You can also upgrade the CPU. The fastest CPU your motherboard most likely supports is most likely an AMD Athlon 64x2 5600+. Unfortunatly those listed in the UK on that popular auction site are going for silly money right now, but there are models abroad for comfortably less than £10. This is a very old CPU and a second hand one isn't worth much .. it might be worth setting up an alert for any that crop up under £10. It's probably going to be around a third faster than your existing CPU ... but that's really not much by today's standards. If you change the CPU, don't forget you will also need a small tube (2ml) of fresh thermal paste/thermal compound which you put sparing on top of the CPU before re-fitting the heat sink.

For the SSD, you might as well go as cheap as your can as you won't get the fastest performance from it - still much better than a spinning disk HDD though. Looking at the smaller sizes, I'd probably recommend a Crucial BX500 120 GB because it has 3D NAND, although I'm aware of a firmware bug on them which makes it look like they erroneasly report that they are reallocating a single bad sector. This can be safely ignored. I recommend these because they use 3D NAND. Cheaper one-dimensionsional TLC SSDs have terrible performance and a batch I used were all dead after 6 months continuous use.

On Edit: "one-dimensional" should read "two-dimensional"; although in reality all transistors are 3 dimensional!

In terms of getting a legit Windows 10 License, the chances are your computer has a Microsoft sticker on it with the OEM license key. If it has that, and it is for Windows 7 or later, you may be able to install and crucially, activate Windows 10. And it is a maybe - some OEM Windows 7 product keys work and others do not. If the key doesn't automatically activate, there is a phone service you can call which may also work. Otherwise, I would recommend trying Linux. As a desktop operating system has matured a long way. And there are two main benefits of using it on your computer.

1) You don't need to pay for a license, if it turns out you need one

2) Linux is more efficient than Windows and it quite often gives a new lease of life to an older computer. If it turns out you don't have a Windows 7 or later OEM key, then you have nothing to lose by trying it out.

There are user manuals, service manuals and specification/data sheets available on-line for your PC. You have probably seen them before, but they can be relatively helpful in terms of the upgrade process.

Finally, and probably most importantly, that 4GB memory limit probably means that this computer has a fairly limited shelf life. Rather than spending the money and taking the time to upgrade it, you could instead spend £100-£150 on a second-hand 3rd/4th/5th Gen Intel i5 PC will give you in the region of 3-5 times the performance and it will probably last you a lot longer, giving you a much better return on investment if you can stretch to it.

What ever you decide to do, good luck.

On Edit: Thanks to HereToday for pointing out the deficiencies in this post. I've been supporting Dell hardware for over 10 years.

HereToday

CoastingHatbox said:

HereToday said:

CoastingHatbox said:

Probably best not to encourage people to do things that are illegal.

"You are authorized to use this software only if you are properly licensed and the software has been properly activated with a genuine product key or by other authorized method."

You could try Linux. I'd recommend Debian with the Cinnamon desktop on old hardware. Look for the unofficial 'with non-free firmware' ISO for the least painful installation experience. You could also look at Ubuntu or Fedora. You might hit a couple of snagging issues which might require a bit of research to resolve, however your experience with it could be the total opposite of that. I've had older relatives using it (temporarily*) with no issues at all.

*I'd never force anyone onto it, but I've leant them laptops running Linux whilst repairing their own computers.

Who has done that here??

Probably better to not accuse people of doing things that you have made up entirely in your own head.

Best not accuse people of making things up.
Software piracy is theft and using a plaftform like MSE to encourage it is at best dubious.

forgotmyname said:

Just install windows 10, dont bother activating it.  It works without activating.

Downsides to not activating you dont get to change some personalisation settings, although there are other menus

to change them. Silly MS left the oold menus active although they are slowly working on that it seems.

After a while a nag message asks you to activate, you can ignore it. change the desktop wallpaper.

Downsides which maybe a bonus, MS wont spam you will lots of useless apps that you didnt ask for.  3rd update

in the past 2 months that changed my browser to Edge and installed Maps. No MS i Dont want either.

But you do get the security updates.

Where is the piracy? Please don't post nonsense. If the software works without a product key, using it does not amount to piracy nor illegal usage.

If they suggested modifying the software in order to bypass activation, then you might have a point. They didn't and you don't. Please desist from posting scaremongering nonsense.

It's not a issue. There are many roads to activating Windows 10 or you can leave it un-activated if you wish. Not activated doesn't equal illegal.

I challenge you to find ANY link from Microsoft that suggests using an yet un-activated Windows 10 installation amounts to piracy or illegality. That paragraph means nothing. Find even a single consumer on the whole of this earth who has been contacted because they are running an un-activated install of Windows 10.
On the contrary you will find articles detailing clearly that there are few restrictions in doing so. Microsoft's best effort to discourage it is to state that people using the Creation Tool should have a product key or licence. No different from the paragraph you posted. Yet, the software itself allows you to run it without a product key...forever. Hardly a mistake in the design.

So the OP can test the software to her heart's content before plumping for an inexpensive product key and you can keep your scaremongering to yourself.

HereToday

poppellerant said:

lonestarfan said:

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

lonestarfan said:

PC is 13 years old. It had more memory added by myself 8 years ago. It was 1GB and I increased it to 3GB. I put 1GB each in slots 2 & 4. I put the 2 x 512MB in slots 1 and 3. 

Any other suggestions on what to do. Thank you. 

What's the make and model of the computer? Or if it's a DIY build, what motherboard is installed? You could probably take out the existing 1GB and replace it with 2GB to get 4GB.

I would ignore all suggestions of installing Linux.  I'm pretty sure HereToday may be able to assist you transfer your Windows 7 license to Windows 10, avoiding the need to purchase a license at all.  But I could be mistaken and crossing my wires with something and/or somebody else.

Isn't it Vista?

Nevertheless, it's not an issue to upgrade from Vista on that device; but easier for her to spend a couple of quid on a product key.