Yep, strange old world. The HP beside me gives good scrap metal value, but I'm not sure that's a good reason to buy it new parts. I thought it was a good deal until I realized that it had an inadequate PSU. Tedious, that. It cost so little more for the bigger chips. Just shows how tight their profit margins are.
The guy that wanted to sell me a cheap HP, said that the Vista would give me a free upgrade to W7. That deal it seems, ended at the end of the year.
The Compaq had W7 as part of the deal, but half the memory, but DDR3...and a worse case. A counter-argument to every factor.
However, my old HP has just crashed since upgrading the memory to 2 gig.
You may recall that it was uncertain that it would take more than 1gig - so I tried it. It was fine for hours, then failed while Google-Earthing. If it does it again, I'll deem it a no-go project, and return everything back to the way is was. I have a while to take back the bits FOC.
Really, with the new AVG 8X (512) and 2 gig main memory, it's driving the new screen very well and is reasonably brisk. The Nvidia software enables me to get rid of all the issues with the white 'blooming' effect.
Frankly, I think it's better than the Mac super-screen they were showing in BestBuy today. The text on that was justa tad out of focus.
The horrible bit is paying premium prices for memory - just because it's out of date. Things used to be cheaper when they were past their sell-by date.
Two gigs, $76 plus tax. Old 2 X 512 memory has no value it seems. If the modern 'Refurbished' and end-of-line machines were as good a deal as mine was, (2004), I'd not waste the money trying to make a silk purse out of the proverbial.