Yeah, our tower is almost five years old now, built in May of '03 I think. Now I built it big and bad back then and paid the price, but only now is it getting a bit long in the tooth. But I sure am getting my money's worth out of the darn thing. XP Pro and a P4 Hyper-threaded really seems to be holding it's own.
So I just went to Crucial to scan her and get a recommendation on a RAM increase. I gonna bump our 512 to 2.5 via a pair of matched sticks on 1 gig a piece and see what that will do instead. If this tower wasn't both a working work station and a P2P "server" even that wouldn't really be needed. It's just when the poor thing has 2-4 apps open and the rest of the office is trying to access AC on it, the other client's access can sometime slow down a bit too much. But half the time that is really more the network (wireless) than the tower.
Then I'll either add a good NAS for the data and it's sharing or I'm still toying with the idea of the new "Home Server" thingy as a good alternative.
What we really need is one extra laptop, client like machine so we can all move around the office freely and stay productive. That will probably be my next purchase after the RAM. Then later the NAS, server addition.
Anyway, just like my '98 ZJ Grand Cherokee, that old 5.2 magnum is sure strong enough for me on a daily basis. I'm actually gonna get another cleaner one from a nice private seller soon. Purchase wisely and take good care of what you've got and you can probably keep it and get great use out of it for a very long time. That's my two cents for what it is worth....
