I have been thinking of cleaning the office of some older computers.

You know, those old, slow computers in the corner we all have. Then I started thinking of the recycle side that we now face in the Village which, mind you, is a good thing. So I started the task of breaking down the computer into re-usable components and not.

The amazing thing was, it is all reusable to someone without a computer. The thing is, just because it’s slow and not modern doesn’t mean it’s a junker. Sure, the processor is old by today’s standards, but in its day it was a screaming fast computer, doing everything for me then, so what happened? Well software, modern software, needs modern hardware to make things like Internet streaming video happen smoothly.

So can I update this older beast for newer software? That was my challenge, and I did it by simply doing the following:

Upgraded the Video Card (512 Meg 8X AGP)                       $19.00

Added more RAM (Maxed it out at 2 Gigabytes)                   $21.00

Upgraded to XP from Windows 98                                     $39.00

Some of these items were Ebay purchases, and others I got at Tigerdirect.com. So with a little effort, I made an old trusted computer 20% faster, and made it more modern. It now is a backup server for media in the home, and isn’t in the recycling bin for maybe two more years.

So if you need to recycle do it right, but take a little time before you jump because you may have a little life still in the old HAL9000 minus one.