My other project...

... I know someone from my online group who is need of a new computer.

His present system has a decent video card but has a single core processor, a small drive and... Windows.... Vista.

(DUN DUN DUN)

He's on a fixed income so a replacement system is out of the question.

My housemate has her old system - Quad core Intel with Windows 7 (32 bit - bummer - they got it when the 64 bit was still having teething problems) and a dying hard drive, and an old, old graphics card. Funny, it used to one of the top of the line cards way back when....

I donated an SSD drive, keyboard, mouse and a 19" monitor. The resolution isn't too hot but it was cheap and it works.

Clean up the drive - done. Still dying though.

Fuss with it until I get it to shrink from 320 gb to 220 gb - done. That was a pain in the neck.

Clonzilla the whole thing to the smaller 250 gb SSD drive. It took me a couple of tries because I forgot to use the secret switch to let it copy even thought the target drive is smaller. Done.

Whoa. That made a serious difference in performance.

Remove old graphics card and insert better one. It too was a spare from an upgrade.

*properly insert graphics card*

*remember to attach external power connection to the graphics card*

Update drivers - done.

Install a few programs to check performance - done.

Shipping is going to be a bit expensive but I'm sure we can handle it.

This has taken me several hours to do and a fair amount of Googling.... but it's ready to roll.

Now if I can only fine a use for some single core XP systems....

-m