Linkmeister

Pull the hard drive and stick it into a new machine, then Ghost it to a newer, probably faster, drive? That would work.

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

But maybe you should just try to get a decent amount of memory. Seriously, you could probably survive more than awhile (another year?) if you just stuck some RAM in your current machine. Modern OS's are really sensitive to inadequate memory. When I stuck another 512 MB of RAM in the wife's P3 machine, it screamed.

We'll assume, for the moment, that you've already scanned for spyware, bloatware, and other annoyances on your machine and cleansed it properly.

I have indeed scanned for unnecessary junk.

Trouble with the first suggestion is, I've got a C drive with Win98 and new stuff, and a D drive with Win95 and all my old mail and documents. The D drive is one I pulled from the prior machine and added into this one.

I worry about wiping Win95 to make space; who knows what files might go that could be expected by the newer system. As it is, I run Excel from the old drive and get an error saying "one of your libraries is missing." It still works, but...

I know memory is pretty cheap; how hard is it to install?

RAM will help. A lot. But it ain't going to make a 333mhz machine feel fast. You could just pick up a cheapie Dell or HP that's been refurbished.

Or you could just get a real computer. ;)

The first computer in this house was a Mac Plus. We had to spend $400 for a 40mb hard drive to augment it, but it worked for about six years and then it finally died.

These days, that $400 will get you a new (well, refurbished) computer. Dell refurbs are usually a good deal. eCost is also your friend.

Upgrading your RAM is generally not too expensive, and depending on your computer, not much more difficult than installing your Ethernet card. Replacing your motherboard and CPU will be complicated, annoying, and nearly as expensive as replacing the computer.

Of course, buying a new computer on top of the router and DSL modem means that the DSL is costing a lot more than you thought it would... On the bright side, you can transfer data by just networking both computers together via the router.

You may even be able to find a "bare bones" machine (case, mobo, power supply, floppy) for $200-300, which is what I used to do when I built my own PCs. If you own all the software (especially the operating system) this is the way to go. Check around your local kiddie computer stores--the ones that the gamer kids open so they can fund their habits--and see what they've got in terms of a bare bones system.

Athlon is the way to go. You can go blazing with an expenditure of less than 300. The SOYO boards have integrated shared RAM video and sound, however you might want to go with a 128 MB AGP video card for games and video processing. Beware of the heat, I tells ya. But DSL rocks with the better processor.

RAM is cheap enough and a 'snap' to install if you have an open slot or two, but you are going to have to match it up with what you have...

Maxtor consumer HDDs that come with Maxblast 3 software can make a drive migration darned near painless (I had it move the OS from Brad's machine across to the new drive with no problems: http://thetimesink.net/2004/DCB040105.html#Wednesday ).

I'll also add in a vote for Dell refurbs; we've had excellent success with them at work. ...and another vote for the Athlon route; I have one in a Shuttle running Linux, and it's loafing and still smoking the Win2k box.