Help PC Upgrade

[cliffhrk]

Hi, after my 6 year old spilt his glass of milk over my last laptop I have decided it would be a good idea to upgrade my old desktop for the kids to use. It will be used for surfing the net, homework and basic game playing. I am hoping that I could be pointed in the right direction on how to do this. The PC in question is a :-

 

COMPAQ PRESARIO 5000 series running on ME.

AMD ATHLON 1GHz

128 MB

30GB HARD DRIVE

56K MODEM

 

I would be grateful for help on what hardware/software I need to achieve this.

Many thanks

cliffhrk

[RandyL]

Don't waste your time cliff. Although there are many different 5000 series all are ancient. I had one myself.

 

Besides the outdated unsupported operating system there is not one piece of hardware worth upgrading. You would need a new processor, more RAM, bigger hard drive and a new operating system to start with. For a fraction of the cost you could buy a new unit that is many times better even after upgrading.

 

You would have a hard time finding software that runs on ME anymore including an antivirus program.

[Armageddon]

I agree with Randy on this one Cliff , personally if its for kids i'd have a look for a reconditioned machine i myself got one recently and for me was the cheapest way to replace a system that i broke

[Dalo Harkin]

It depends what your idea of basic gaming is.

 

As the others have said you can pick up budget systems for around the £200-£300 mark

[cliffhrk]

Thanks for the advice, I won't continue with that idea :). I suppose the computer itself is'nt worth much either, it seems a shame as apart from not connecting to the net it seems to be working ok.

Thanks again

cliffhrk

[Dalo Harkin]

You will need to add an Ethernet card, either with or without WIFI capability and then you should be good to go then.

 

As for gaming, you may just be able to play flash games on the net, but you wont be playing much more than that on it

[RandyL]

As Dalo said basic flash games on the net. But there are plenty of web based games you will not be able to play due to the onboard graphics and DirectX version supported.