Hi Everyone, need some opinions, I have an acer aspire 1998 vintage. It has been a good machine and don't want to chuck it. I was thinking of upgrading to xp, someone suggested I stay with ME. Also a poster told me erase the hd and start clean, this would eliminate any problems that could pop up The speed is the minimum required for xp but will work. Another thought was replacing the mobo and am up in the air about which way to go. A poster told me if I did replace the board, I could not use any of the components from my old machine, this was not a good way to go unless I replaced all pieces. I would appreciate any suggestions you my have as a way to go for me, I thank you in advance for any suggestions you may have. frank

If it's doing everything that you want, why upgrade? I suggest you stick with what works until you have a good reason to upgrade. WinXP is kinda fussy and you might find that some of your hardware or software doesn't work. There is a program at the microsoft web site that will check for XP compatibility. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!!!

Machines that old are just not worth upgrading, except for a little bump here and there, for example, if you find a good buy on memory. That machine may have proprietary mountings for the motherboard, meaning that you may not be able to install a better board in the same box. A better board in the same box now means the power suppy is marginal. I'd just install Whenhoed 98 and leave it as is. A machine like that is STILL pretty useful for word processing and some internet surfing. I recently reworked a similar machine, which had a LAN card installed. I put it on the 'net to download AVG and a few other things. It really was not too bad.

1st choice would be 98se, 2nd 98, 3rd Me. I have a similar machine (200mmx,144Mb) I use, with dail-up (external Modem) and its still usable. Recently picked up a 32Mb nvidia graphics card (PCI), on ebay for $13.50 (included shipping). Nice little upgrade over the 2mb cirrus logic card that was in it, something you might consider for under $20.00 larry

XP would probably be awfully slow with that spec. In fact W98SE can do a whole lot more than just a bit of Word Processing and surfing. I do about everything on mine except downloading and producing DVD's but that is a hardware (HD size) limitation rather than software, which would be easy to fix if I was interested. As often as not it is the hardware that is really the limitation (new XP machines have bigger/faster hardware). I accept that eventually it becomes impossible to get hardware or software which is suitable for an old OS, or a new OS which will run on old hardware. Software has nearly always been written (badly) assuming everyone has the latest and greatest of everything. It is often dressed up with crackpot gimmicks and presentation that are pointless but need a fast machine to wade through it all. DerekW

I thank you all for your input and advice, I am lucky to have techies like you here to help me along.