I've been fighting with my Dell computer that was manufactured in 2004 and I got in late 04...it was getting really slow lately and making me crazy. I was thinking that it's old and maybe it's time for replacement, so I started pricing systems and even looking at places like Tiger Direct to maybe build my own. Well, the systems I priced out were too much for our budget with the specs being better than what I have and I could build a system from scratch for a bit more than that (but it would certainly be a "dream" system for me), so they were also out of our price range.
So I started looking into what I could do with this machine...it's run perfectly since I got it, it was just getting slower, so it made me think that I could do some tweaking to get it better. I downloaded a program called "Speed Up My PC" and it worked, but it still didn't seem like it was running like it should. I found my restore CD's so we figured why not reload XP (I've got an external drive anyway that I back up to, so I could put all the data there in the meantime).
Well, we did it and man, does it make a difference...it's like a new machine again! If you have an older system like this and you've used it alot (I'm on mine every day doing Photoshop and surfing the internet), I highly recommend doing this if you have your operating system reload CD's and an external drive. I reloaded the "Speed Up My PC" software and it still found stuff, so it was even better yet again after that. I am so pleased that now I don't have to drop over $500 right now for a new pc.
So I started looking into what I could do with this machine...it's run perfectly since I got it, it was just getting slower, so it made me think that I could do some tweaking to get it better. I downloaded a program called "Speed Up My PC" and it worked, but it still didn't seem like it was running like it should. I found my restore CD's so we figured why not reload XP (I've got an external drive anyway that I back up to, so I could put all the data there in the meantime).
Well, we did it and man, does it make a difference...it's like a new machine again! If you have an older system like this and you've used it alot (I'm on mine every day doing Photoshop and surfing the internet), I highly recommend doing this if you have your operating system reload CD's and an external drive. I reloaded the "Speed Up My PC" software and it still found stuff, so it was even better yet again after that. I am so pleased that now I don't have to drop over $500 right now for a new pc.
