Any way to upgrade this?

[BACKDROPsilhouette]

Just out of pure curiosity, since I was taking a look at this big brick of junk this morning, I was wondering if it was at all possible to upgrade the components of a B110 Dell Desktop to have more RAM or better specs? A while back I thought about it, but the B always looked like an 8 to me, so I could never find what the PC even had in it. Right now my siblings just use it for typing word documents, listening to music, and playing the Sims 2 veeerrry slowly, or even the Original Sims. We could never get the internet connected to it and it has no wireless card. I tried to use a wireless USB adapter once and it didn't read it.

Anyway, my parents are looking into buying a new family computer, so I was wondering if it would be worth it to try to up what the old Dell currently has, or just forget about it and get something new.

Here is the link to the specs of the computer, if needed.

Documentation

Other links for the system.

Documentation

[glc]

Trying to upgrade that thing is a dead end street. Retire it.

[BACKDROPsilhouette]

Will do. Good bye useless brick.

Well hey, at least we got it for free?
The children can play solitaire on it.
I'm surprised Photoshop CS4 runs on it.

Thanks, glc.

[Blue Flux Blazer]

It's fun to try to breathe new life into some retired machines. Depending on the amount of RAM it has, it might run some versions of a Linux operating system quite well. You might even find that your ethernet adapter works again.

I was recently given a nice retired computer built in 2002 that had 256MB of RAM. I was happy to be able to install Linux Mint 9 LXDE after version 8 install failed. I've since increased the RAM to 640 MB and now I'm zipping along on Firefox and posting this message on that machine no problem.

[glc]

How much ram does it have now, and how many modules?

[David M]

Old style RAM has gone up in price which may make it not very cost effective to upgrade. As has been suggested, don't sink any money into it and save it for undemanding computing tasks.

[glc]

1gb modules for that B110 are 50 bucks from Crucial. Is it worth $100 to max it out at 2gb? I don't think so.

[BACKDROPsilhouette]

Right now it only has 512mb.
I'd only be able to buy a 1gb module for it anyway, because there are only two spots to add memory if I'm not mistaken.
I think the most I could do for it is get a 16-25 dollar PCI wireless card and use it for the internet, since the sibs need that at least to do homework assignments.
Most of us have our own laptops, and I'll be getting my desktop soonish, but I get finicky when people mess with my belongings.

If I don't put any money into it, I suppose it CAN just be used for typing and saving documents to a flash drive. And if they feel like waiting an hour for the Sims 2 to start up and want to play that, more power to them.

[David M]

It would work fine as a word processor or for running Excel or add a larger drive and use it for backing up files.

[kilgoretrout]

It will run light versions of linux fine. The Linux Mint LXDE mentioned earlier is good choice. If you have the disk space, you can set up a dual boot with windows and linux. Added bonus with linux - if you are the guy taxed with cleaning up windows malware from the family computer, you won't have to worry about that any more with linux.

[BACKDROPsilhouette]

Originally Posted by kilgoretrout [/words removed]

I'm just trying to find a PCI wireless card that will be compatible with Linux MinT LXDE right now.
And yes, I am the person taxed with cleaning up windows malware, among fixing all other computer issues.
I would be relieved to not have to work on computer issues as much, though most of the time I'm happy to help.
Once I get internet working on that thing, I'll probably have a lot to work on.

David M - It has an 80GB hard drive. I have an external, so I think we'll end up just using it for basic functions.

[glc]

That's a dual channel mobo - you should pull the 512 and put a pair of 1gb's in, or find an EXACT match to your single 512 and put it in your second slot - assuming you are going to do anything at all.

Run a cable to your router.