I finally got a roundtoit and upgraded the random access memory in my ancient Dell and it's like I have a new computer. When I bought it it only had 256k of RAM. Many years ago I upgraded to 512k and yesterday made the jump to 1GB.

It's smokin' fast now.

The good thing is I waited long enough for the price of memory cards for outdated computers to hit rock bottom prices. I got two brand new 512k cards for $9.02 including shipping from Amazon.

Plus I cleaned out many years worth of dust and spiderwebs. It was real nasty but it runs a lot quieter after a thorough cleaning.

How many years will a 2002 vintage Dell with Windows XP last?

I use a computer to run a CNC plate burner every day all day that runs windows 95. So almost 20 years. Other than replacing a power buppy that has been it and it sits out in a cabinet in a dusty/dirty and hot shop.

Yes, Mo Ram is betta.

I'm running 12 Gigs on one machine, 16 on the other, and that doesn't count what's on the video cards.

How many expansion slots does your MB have? You can run up to 4 gigs of ram with XP. We still have systems running 98SE, and they are at least 20 years old.

According to specs my system is limited to 1GB max.

It's doing OK with 1GB. I was running out of memory with Chrome plus AdBlock and Avast and and all the other stuff that loads on webpages nowadays.

I'd get Windows 7 and install it. You will have a better system.

I'd get Windows 7 and install it. You will have a better system.

I thought this was gonna be about a Dodge pick up truck...


Mike

Dimension 2400?

If I had more HD space it'd still run.

The best update to speed up your computer , isn't really ram, but more ram will help , the best update for speed is to replace your old rpm Hard Drive with a Digital Hard Drive.

It's a Dimension 2350 and I don't have any issues with HD space. I've still have lots of unused space.

Put Linux on there it'll last forever.

Well ...

The memory sticks that I first received didn't play well with my system. It booted up OK, ran fine for awhile, but then it started having random issues. Chrome would crash, AdBlock wouldn't load or crashed, and I got the blue screen of death twice warning to remove any newly installed hardware. It got to the point where I had put the old memory back in.

I called A-TECH (the Amazon retailer) and I got to give two thumbs way up for great customer service. The gal I spoke with identified the problem with the replacement memory. It was a higher speed (2700) than what my system was designed for (2100) and they promptly sent out two new sticks and all seems so good so far.

Yep, same situation with mine, 16GB RAM. I've turned off everything that I can but it still runs slow when there is a lot of traffic on the Internet, which is most of the time. I think the problem is in the hard wires from the phone company. I pay for high speed Internet but that rarely occurs. Maybe at 3:00AM when nobody's using the system.

KC

That is what Jeff Fisher keeps saying...More RAM

I doubt it would run Window's 7. Windows 7 required a minimum of a 1 gig process. There we not may 1 gig processors in 2002. And that's running the 32 bit version, if you go 64 bit it requires a 2 gig processor.

I got a bad azz 1.8 gig Pentium 4 processor.

When I bought my computer it was solid mid-level machine and has performed well over time all things considered.

I'm not changing anything. I've done so many tweaks over the years that I'd hate to have to start all over again.

What upgrade is best really depends on the system.

Most folks who don't know much about computers, and buy a bargain machine, buy one with too little ram, so for them it is the simplest most effective upgrade.

Next is the video card. If you are doing more then just browsing, a good video card will take the graphic intensive operations away from your main cpu and free it up for other operations, and bring some addition RAM for video operations along with it. As a data point, my video card has twice as much memory as the OP's system.

Where hypothesis holds correct is this. For along time, the greatest bottle neck in computer performance was the size of the pipe (the Bus) between the hard drive and the motherboard. This bottle necks been eliminated, so the bottleneck became harddrive performance. The new SDD's are much faster then the old spinney versions, and the technology is now reaching a point where they are big enough, reliable enough, and cheap enough that they are a very worthwhile, IF you have a newer machine that can take advantage of them.

Congrats on your successful upgrade.
I haven't used a Dell since they stopped speaking English at their call centers.