Community poll forum: The last time you performed a computer hardware upgrade was:

When did I last have the skins on my computer case? Hmmmm...

Moved cards around as part of an IRQ reassignment project.

Added a ATA/133 LBA48 Promise IDE controller card. The mobo already has a standard IDE controller plus an onboard HighPoint RAID IDE controller. I am about to flash my BIOS and update drivers for LBA48 on those two controllers.

Moving hard drives around to see the sequence that Linux finds them, and which positions support >137GB. This is part of a TiVo upgrade project.

Every now and then, I remove an ancient hard drive, or add a 200GB that I find laying around in a junk drawer.

I have a new mouse with various scrolling and forward/back buttons. I thought that it was a gimmick, but now I miss it on other computers.

Bought an IDE-to-USB 2.0 adaptor cable for running bare drives outside of the case. I may or may not add a hard-drive drawer.

One of these days I will install my dusty DVD burner.

I am trying to figure out why my audio inputs are not working. Fixing it may involve software or hardware.

I may try quieter fans. (I would love to build a silent case, but I am not a modder, nor am I up for that much work).

I haven't tried my Dazzle yet, but I have plans for it.

I am running Win2000 Pro. I have XP Pro, but I have delayed installing it because I am waiting till I stop changing my hardware around (hmmmm....). I don't want XP to continually think that I am trying to install it on a different computer (or is that just an MS Office issue?).

The truth is that I do not like spending time upgrading my computer. I just want a quiet computer that runs like greased lightning, and which does everything that I want it to.

In short, I do not plan to do any upgrades. It just happens.

- David

I have a six-year old Dell desktop. When I upgraded my OS the Turtle Beach sound card it came with was rendered useless since there's no drivers for it. I bought a used SB Live 5.1 on ebay for $10 (shipping included).

The second upgrade...I bought a new computer (DELL Inspiron 6000).

so i now have 1.5GB of RAM

I also got a new 8 button mouse, the blue Logitech mx510.

My last computer upgrade was about a month and a half ago. I upgraded the AMD processor and switched from a single IDE 80 gig harddrive to 2 80 gig SATA harddrives set up as a striped RAID to improve my computers speed.... Eric

Installed additional memory, mouse and operating system.

I built a whole new system.

I spent the whole of the previous year buying all brand new parts from different auction sites and also some parts from retail outlets here and there. I did it this way so I didn't have to buy the whole lot in one go and spend a fortune. I was able to pay it all off over the year that way. I just bought one or two parts every month or so when I saw something that would work for me at a good price, or else bid on a few items I wanted but left my maximum bid of what I wanted to pay at my first bid and didn't add to it if outbid. It's so easy to get carried away on auctions you can finish up paying more than the item would cost from a shop if you get in a bidding war with someone.

I suppose by the time I got all the parts together they weren't the latest gear any more, and I have also noticed some of the same parts I bought have come down in price since I bought them. The CPU was a big drop unfortunately. I paid $475 AU for it then, an Intel P4 3.0 E which had not been available for long in Australia at the time. Lately I have seen the same thing advertised for about $350 AU, Ouch!!!. Less than 12 moths later and over a hundred off the price. It's like that with everything you buy any way, it always gets cheaper after you pay for it.
First time I ever used all brand new parts to build one of my PC's. In the past I was always 2 years behind everybody else and was just picking up used parts that had dropped in price as no one wanted them any more.
I'm still happy with everything though and it should last me for another few years before the upgrade bug bites me again.

Had several messages that I needed to run checkdisk for missing or corrupted files for about a week. Lots of Java errors while playing games and then no power to get past boot up. I replaced the 400W Power supply which caused hard drive bad clusters, slow loading but luckily did not damage the motherboard with a 480W supply.

My most recent laptop updates are a PCMCIA card with USB 2.0 ports (my system came with 1.1) and a CD/DVD Player w/CD burner (system came with player only).

The first thing I did was double the RAM and add an external HDD that I used on a previous laptop. This system has little doors on the bottom so that I can play around inside it - remember when only a service tech could upgrade a laptop?

I have to add that I don't think I'll ever go back to a desktop computer after a year and a half of having my addiction... er, computer with me when I leave home. I timed myself at 3.5 minutes to disconnect all of the peripherals and stick everything into the carrying case. Can't take the desktop PC anywhere, and I have withdrawal symptoms when away from it for too long. LOL

The last upgrade I made was adding a firewire port for my digital video cam. I imported the 4 port card and firewire cable for $5 from HK. Great!

i upgraded by adding a western digital hardrive and 256mb of memory...this was real great move....made computer much faster and gave me lots of room to make mistakes without crashing...

Last month I upgraded my Geforce4 64 meg card to a new Geforce fx 5700 256mb for only $70

And I got a 16x samsung dvd burner for $49