Community poll forum: How old is your current main computer?

It's a laptop with a Pentium M processor with 17 inch screen with WXUGA+, 2 gigs of ram, 100 Gig HD. I'm running Vista Ultimate very nicely and have been using Vista since Beta 2.

I have a Dell 4700 which I purchased in 2004. I have had no trouble with this computer. I will be purchasing a Dell for my next new buy. I only hope that Microsoft has gotten the bugs out of Vista by the time I buy.

I have a Sony Vaio AIO PCV-V300G desktop that is, I think, 3 years old. I upgraded the RAM to the maximum possible (1 GB). I have re-imaged it twice, once to play with Ubuntu Linux, and once after I found a root-kit on it. I have had no problems with the hardware. I've had to install two 4-port USB hubs to handle all of the external drives, Smart-phone, Camera, etc. that I use with it. I've been extremely pleased with the performance. However, I recently started playing with video editing, and conversion to different formats. I'm finding it is quite slow at this. I'm planning on replacing it with a dual-core based PC later this year. But the speed and expansion room for RAM are the only reasons. I like the AIO form and size are very nice. But, that's a two-edged sword.

Regards,

Seadaddy

Dell Inspiron E1505 - Vista

I had a friend of a friend build a computer for me back in 2000. It started out as Windows XP Professional with 128mb of ram and a 20gb hard drive with a cd burner. I thought I was on top of the world considering my first pc was an HP with Win 98 and 64mb ram with a 6gb hard drive. I moved away from my friends so I started taking courses at the local community college for pc repair and troubleshooting. I was having a lot of problem that I could not deal with back then but soon I had my custom built pc in class with me. I rebuilt it; new motherboard, 64 bit AMD processor, a pair of hard drives (200 & 120GB), 1GB of ram, DVD burner to go along with a DVD-ROM, three case fans, 400 watt power supply, 128mb video card, and a lot of time working on it. I recently added another stick of ram (1.5GB total) and I am considering another video card (256mb). I am happy with what I've got and will probably never upgrade to Windows Vista with this PC.

I agree with you. The shell may be old but the motherboard could be brand new.

Mine isn't, it really is from September 2002. However, the DVD-rom/CD-R is only a few months old.

I do not rebuild computers - Although I have watched people build them. I am just not that good with fine motor-neural coordination.


femalegtrst

After years of constantly replacing computers when I started getting too many error messages, and this time it wouldn't print with a new printer, I switched to a new iMac. I absolutely love it, and would never go back to Windows again.

I have an HP Pavillion 9870. Over the years I have added a 256 MB radeon video card, put in 512 MB RAMBUS RAM (orig had 128 MB)upgraded HD from 60 GB to primary 80 GB and slave 40 MB, added USB 2.0 card. Also upgraded OS to XP home from Me. Runs well especially with upgrade of RAM and using XP.

I depend on it too much. But I have several old computers still running well. I tuck them in out of the way places and control them through vnc from my main computer. I cram as many harddrives in them as I can and use them for network storage. The kids have second hand computers in their rooms (also monitored by vnc). I collect other people's throw-aways that often only needed to be reformatted & os reloaded to get rid of all the adware & spyware that was crippling them. And always more ram - rarely see an off the shelf computer that had enough ram! My main computer is a laptop that I take with me almost everywhere, so I keep an older computer at home running all the time with a ups - kind of a home base.

My dual P3 has done it's job well, but won't run the latest 3D software for me and is only AGP 4X. It's past it's prime for graphics intensive work. For most anything else, it's still a very good machine and I'll continue to keep it and run it on my home network for other tasks when I replace it with another dual processor machine each with dual cores or a single quad core machine with express PCI graphics capabilities very soon. I'm also looking forward to utilizing the faster drive technology that my old machine doesn't support. However, the Promise ATA disk array in the current one has helped compensate for that for the most part as has the 1GB of RAM I've had since the beginning.

It's always difficult to know when the right time is to start from scratch vs. continuing to upgrade & repair a machine. As my board can no longer support more upgrades that are reasonable or cost effective, it's time to start from scratch with a new machine that will hopefully keep up with my needs for more than the 3 years I try to get from one.

i have a pimped up dell xps m1210 pre-installed w/ vista premium. have experienced some isolated compatibility issues w/ some softwares, but nothing major. had to repurchase some previous software that was not vista compatible. also own a 3 yrs old gateway notebook that recently crashed, just as the service plan expired...nice.

Apparently, Dell computers (and probably others) have been substantially cheapened in the last five years or so. When I upgraded my 1998 XPS R450 in 2003, the repair person said to upgrade what I had rather than replace it with what was then priced at 25% of what I paid in 1998. His reasoning was that the older compuuters had better constructed components which were running cooler, leading to better reliability. Naturally, the new computers in 2003, at much reduced prices, had many more features and speed, but I valued then, and value today, reliability above all else since my home office cannot live with downtime. You don't have to live with poor reliability, but I don't know which of today's computers have decent reliability.

Dell Dimension XPS R450 (Pentium 2), purchased new in Nov 1998, upgaded about four years ago with XP OS and total RAM of 256. Added cable internet Oct 2005. Never had a hardware failure all these years. Reluctant to get new computer since I have so many files and programs onboard and understand programs are not transferable. Certainly am leary of Vista! Solution is probably to add better performing laptop and ease into use over several months. But only someday......

I built it myself. It is a Amd 64 bit 3.3ghz processor, Asus K8v deluxe SE board, 3 hard drives 250, 150, 80 gigs. 1 gig of ram with 400 frontside bus. Nvida 7800 GT OC. A cd rom drive a dvd burner with built in sound.

Don't you think it's time to move into the 21st Century? (Dial-up, wow)Unless, you live way out in the Boonies.