Desktops forum: Poll: How old is your current main computer?

Dell Dimension 8200 running Win XP SP3, Office XP, etc.. Now looking ahead 18-24 months to Win 7, SP1 (probably 64-bit) for new PC and replacement of legacy peripherals and s-ware.

Built by small PC company GMT Compters Ltd. 2gb memory. O/S Windows XP Home. Works well - bit slow at times. Have added another internal drive plus an external drive for backup.

as old as the Dinosaurs?
I have an old IBM netvista P3 with 512meg ram raddon vid card, evicta 5.1 sound card it works!!!!

intel 2.6 quad cpu
4 gig memory
zotac nvidia 280 graphics card
2 striped/raided 75 gig drives just for windows to sit on
2 250 gig hdd for games to sit on
2 ext turnal 1t hdd
water cooled
goes like the wind and super cool even on so called super games ,
grid crysis all cool at 40 even with house temp in baking mode ...

My Dell Inspiron 8600 was shipped 11/10/03..using XP..Mostly e-mail, photo, VOIP.......Computer had a serious melt down while under an extended warranty and Dell came to the house to repair it ........after 18 trips to Italy, 3 to the Dominican Republic, plus thousand of hours of use at home I am starting to get worried.....and while this computer has served me extremely well I'm not sure which computer to purchase in the near future.......a new one is out there waiting for me ....just have to do the research.....

It's not the latest, nor the greatest, but after several years of doing a good job for me, I still use the old girl. and it's helped after maxing out her ram (4 512mb SD-Ram sticks making a total of 2gb of Ram), replacing her old PowerPC 400mhz proccessor with a 1.8ghz processor.

Giving her 2 graphics cards 1 being an ATI AGP 9800 pro card, and the other being an ATI PCI 7800 card. 4 monitors, a 20 inch widescreen HP LCD monitor, a 17 inch HP LCD monitor, a 15 inch samsung LCD monitor and an old 28 inch GE TV that I play most my movies on.

Given her 2 internal 120gb replacing the single 20gb hardrive that was in her. Even replaced the original Zip drive with a GeeThree: Sweet Multiport.

She even still uses an original Apple airport card.

All in all since I'm not a big gamer and more a movie nut I mostly play several DVD's , Divx, Xvid, iTunes, and quicktime movies on her plus casual web browsing. She also does hard work encoding video's over an Xgrid with my much older G3 iMac witch was recently upgraded to 1gb.

ancient technology you say? Yes. Does it get the job done? HELL YEAH!!!! XD

(And for those that want to know I'm still running Tiger on the G4 and G3 since it was the last great OS for the PowerPC architecture.)

I use a ThinkPad Z60m. It's on every day for at least 9 hours, and works beautifully. Hard drive died last year, which surprised me (ThinkPads are normally synonymous with quality) but was actually a blessing in disguise. I put in a new 100 GB hd and installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu takes advantage of all the fun stuff this ThinkPad can do, so in no way do I miss Windows.

This machine, with a 2GHz processor and 1.2GB ram, has exceeded my expectations in every way. Talk about a workhorse.

I bought a Mac Book Pro a few months back for my main office computer ( yes, I went tot he dark side, but hey, it just works), and I just bought my wife an Acer Aspire One netbook for use around the house while surfing the internet. Prior to getting these machines, we had our laptops (Acer & Toshiba) for 3-4 years, and truth be told, we still use a 4 year old Toshiba for the "heavy lifting" at home.

God moornin:

I have a titanium Powerbook (Apple)--867 MHZ. I mostly use it for word-processing and surfing the Internet, but I would like the functionality of the Intel Apples to be able to run Windows for some of the applications I want to use. I have Virtual PC but it runs really slowly and the screen is tiny. But I have loved this computer more than the ones I have had before--I have had Macs since 1984 and the very first one with 128k RAM!

I am interested in the new line of Apple laptops, which I have yet to see. My new laptop will be, as it is now, my only computer, so I am swithering between the portability of the Macbooks and the bigger screen on the MacbookPro. I am not sure that I need that much power though and the price difference is significant.Or maybe I will just stick with what I have until it won't do what I need it to do.

Carole

After 25 years I finally went back to Apple. I've got an Intel-based MacBook. If I just have to use Windows, I can run it simultaneously with VMWare Fusion.

I've been lucky I have a friend who steered me in the rite direction off the top. he told me PC's are like cars they will all get you there .I was a compaq die hard . So I went to the store with a list of what I wanted /needed. My first and only computer. 1 gig ram cd-rewrite, DVD player/burner etc but they gave me a bootleg windows OS. Well now 4 yrs later the only original part is the Mobo. I've cut holes in the side panel added additional RAM, Fans & Lights recently a new Heatsink fan. I found out about thermal gel by accident actually purchase some before I needed it, I've learned a lot,just dont ask me to count RAM.

My no-longer-sold Dell Inspiron 640M was a hand-me-down from my mother last year, running XP Media Center Edition 2005. Now she is using an Inspiron 1420 running Vista Home Basic. I've been eyeing one of Dell's XPS laptops lately. Deciding between a XPS 15" or 13".

I usually build my own boxes and I've really gotten upset with the constant un-needed changes. I have an AMD Athlon XP 3200 CPU on a SOYO Dragon MB with a gig of ram, 160 gig WD HD, ATI 128 AGP graphics, Creative Labs sound with XP as the OS. I keep it alive and it still serves me well for graphics and work. I've been working with PC's since the dawn of the Tandy Home computer. Heck I even had an Osborne. What gets me is how we've become slave to the OS rather than the other way around. Every upgrade that comes out from Microsoft has required a substantial hardware upgrade which creates an incredible surge in the waste stream. My question to everyone is, do you really need that much computing power? The average home user never hits the limit of their PCs' capability because all they're doing is sending e-mails and surfing the net. That can be done with cheap, less power hungry boxes or laptops. I still recall my favorite software bundle of all time. It was Geoworks and it would run on a 286. AOL actually used it as their GUI before switching to then Windows 3.1. Geoworks had everything a home user needed. I know some people like to chase the technology but think about it. Over time, how much money do you spend doing that and do you really need that much power ? Will you ever reach the full capability of your PC if you are an average home user? (providing that you're not into high order fragging)
Take care !!

Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium IIIE, 933 MHz (7 x 133)
Motherboard Name AOpen AX34 (Pro) (1 ISA, 4 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 AMR, 3 DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT82C694X Apollo Pro133A
System Memory 768 MB (SDRAM)
BIOS Type Award Modular (05/03/01)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM2)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200 (Microsoft Corporation) (64 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
Monitor AOC 7Elr(A)/7Elr(A)+ [17" CRT] (112798539)

This past spring, I decided I'd had it with crashes and other maintenance issues with "Microsoft Windows" based machines....been using them for over 10 years. So I decided to try the switch to an Apple product. Bought a Mac mini, learned how to use OS X and then sold the Mini to a friend. I then purchased a Mac Pro with dual 2.8GHz processors, installed 16GB's of RAM and have never looked back. It's powerful,OS X runs smoothly and it does everything I used to do on my Windows machines without the hassles. HD video editing, photo editing and even gaming are all fun now! No OS or hardware is perfect but this is as close to perfection as modern technology allows.