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I also just realized he should look up the specs on his motherboard (since he stated it has some age) that his RAM max is 4GB and not 2GB. If it's 2GB sometimes the board won't recognize a 1GB chip but rather forces itself to read 4x 512MB to max out at 2GB (sounds stupid i know, but it's a possibility). If that's the case a BIOS revision should clean that up, but I'm leaning on the side that his mobo should read 1GB chips fine.

Not to sound overcautious, but in an "ideal" computer environment you should have an Active Battery Backup (I think that's the terminology anyway, it's been several years since i took A+) it's the battery backup that actually runs and regulates constantly as opposed to the other type that only kicks in during a power surge. And if a batery backup is not in your budget you should have a surge protector strip with a very high joules count.

That's a very good card if you give David a good deal on it.

I think it just boils down to how much money you're willing to spend and whether or not you need more than 1GB. You can run 4x 256MB PC2700 RAM chips in dual channel but you would need to purchase two RAM chips of the same specifications as your current (which may be difficult, but economically would be the cheapest). You can go ahead and purchase the 2x 512MB PC2700 which will still give you a Gig of RAM but might cost a little more and if it doesn't feel fast enough pick up two more. Or do the same as the latter but with PC3200; when you really look at it, PC3200 will cost roughly the same as PC2700 (here's an example compared with Hurin's PC3200 Crucial suggestion), and the power concern of PC3200 over PC2700 is negligible. Eventhough your motherboard is old, so long as you are purchasing a new and stable PSU, you will have no problems bumping up to the higher bandwidth RAM, and the power strain on the PSU (even one below 400W) should not be a problem. Heat on the other hand is a different issue, but i doubt you would need to upgrade your mobo fan (and even if you do it's a $15 investment). Which like i said previously is kind of the risk of being economical. You would need to purchase exactly the same RAM as what is currently in there for this to work with no kinks. That's not to say it wouldn't work with a different manufacturers RAM, but for the sake of stability and reliability and giving account that you want to run dual channel, that is really the only way to do it. The ethernet card should work fine in any PCI slot (assuming its PCI), those type of standards haven't changed in over a decade (not since ISA, EISA, etc.). And good for you for getting your hands dirty with your other PC, I look forward to hearing your experience with tearing down your PC and putting it back together with new parts soon. Edit: newegg reference, etc etc

I think just about any upgrade is an upgrade from what you have now (no offense) and the board in your HP is still built by ASUS it's just has a proprietary BIOS so you won't modify or overclock it (it's in the specs link you posted) so flashing the BIOS might be useful if you wanted to run the processor a little faster.

PSU's are one of the things you can't go cheap on, especially if you want longevity from your machine. Try to go with something in the 500 range if possible, tomshardware has a few really good recommendations (though his site sucks to navigate through).

I have to be honest when i say that i've only majorly upgraded (not just a RAM upgrade) one PC in my life and it was due to it being my guinea pig for learning how to overclock. Normally when the "upgrade bug" bites me, i get my parts list together and realize that i should just build a new machine and then find a new purpose for my old one (file server, PVR, family internet machine, Music box, TV internet surfer, etc.). Even the one i overclocked ended up becoming a PVR and internet machine for my bedroom TV. High end video cards are ridiculously overpriced, but a lot of times if you surf forums long enough there's always someone getting rid of one for super cheap. A lot of the builds that i've done ended up being very cost effective because of used parts, while i normally don't recommend this to people it can sometimes really work out in your favor. Reason being is that 90% of hardware failures happen within the first month of owning the equipment, so if someone has "tested" it for you then you're almost guaranteed it won't blow on you anytime soon. Truth be told i've only purchased used video cards because prices are so inflated, and i get all of my Intel processors cheap because i have a friend who works in R&D for Intel (which also allows me to purchase server chips of which are normally reserved for business use that have better heat transfer coatings). I've reused RAM but never purchased used RAM; which also reminds me that crucial gives you a lifetime warranty on your RAM and they're good on it since i had one replaced before. Also be warned that high end graphics cards get very HOT and not just for the card itself for the case and mobo too, so be sure to check your temps with mobo monitor to be sure it stays within a safe range.

Oh, Also to address changing out a PSU, it's very simple. Three screws and it falls right out. Dependent on certain proprietary brands (dell, hp, etc.) you'll find it's more/less the same usually one or two screws but with the addition of some kind of locking mechanism. I don't want to destroy your plans for upgrading your computer, but if you're going to be buying a new vid card, new ram, and a new PSU, why not just build a new machine. At this point you're only a mother board, processor, and case away from having an entirely new PC.

for David, as far as RAM is concerned, you will certainly notice the performance difference when leaving multiple folders open and running memory intensive programming since that it was RAM nearly specifically addresses. Essentially when you run or are running a program, it takes the information from the hard drive or whatever media you're running it from and places it on your RAM to make it quickly and easily accessible. This way it doesn't have to constantly access your hard drive, it can just shoot down the address bus straight to your RAM and gather it's information to shoot back through the external data bus. Increasing the size (from 512mb to 1Gb or higher) would in tern allow you to store more information in RAM and your computer could then run seemlessly. The speed of ram (PC2700, PC3200, etc.) is how fast the RAM works to find the information that is stored in its RAM modules. Things like cas latency and the like can be adjusted manually through most CMOS options and are normally reserved for uber geeks who sit around and play with timing options till they find what is optimal (just because your current timing is set lower doesn't always mean it will be faster for different RAM). A lot of times you'll find the stock settings work great unless you're overclocking your machine and find that different timing will be beneficial to performance (like for the computer my brother and i built, completely changed all of the timing). Also if you see overclocking in your future you'll want to look for RAM that has "heat spreaders" to assist in dissipating heat through the case instead of over your mobo. As far as brand, try to stay away from cheaper brands like PNY; Crucial is definitely the top dog but you'll pay a premium for it. You can usually find Kingston and Corsair pretty cheap and they've always done just fine in my machines. As far as power supplies are concerned, stick with Coolermaster and Antec, two best brands around for quiet consistent PSU's. The consistency is a big deal (like VF-19 explained you can have one blow on you) especially for overclocking or machines that are just within the limits of the PSU. For mobos I like to stick with MSI and ASUS, most other brands aren't worth a look (and no matter how tempting never purchase Soyo; worst brand ever). As far as Video cards go, ATI is the manufacturer for Radeon but for Nvidia, they only are making the GPU that is attached to the manufacturers board. Which means for Nvidia stuff you have to read closely to the specs, normally it doesn't make a difference either way but i remember a few cases where there was a dramatic difference. The important bit is making sure you're getting the right RAM that comes with the Vid card, since a lot of the same type of card come with two different RAM sizes or types (128MB, 256MB, DDR, DDR2, etc.). Usually the fans that come with them suck and need to be replaced anyway, so i wouldn't purchase it based on that, but if MSI is making the board i'd pick that up.

I've actually heard of that problem; my brother in fact is the one who experienced it and it is the exact same thing (LCD was too good to pass up but didn't have DVI). He's currently in the market for a cost effective LCD with DVI input to resolve it, but his rig is so fast as it is (without crossfire) it kind of doesn't matter. If your curious him and i built him the 4.2GHZ Overclocked D805 PC from Tom's Hardware's build it yourself article. Him and I built it with top of the line water cooling and pretty much the best hardware you could get, it was actually the first Intel we've built in about 4 years (we're AMD people). I've got to tell you that thing screams, and it only cost about 900 after you factor in all peripherals. As soon as some money frees up i'm going to build one for the house, and then wait until the hardware innovation slows down (Intel Quad cores, AMD following suit but then switching up to APU's in 2009, etc.).

if that link is your exact specifications then you have four DIMM slots for RAM. Instead of replacing your ram, you can just purchase two more PC2700 256MB chips and give yourself a total of 1GB (which is more than sufficient). I recall you inquiring a page or so back about upgrading RAM, so I think that would be the most cost effective to performance way to go about it. If you were to purchase two PC3200 256MB you wouldn't notice a difference against PC2700 since your machine would only run as fast as its slowest member(s).

If you're willing to spend the money and it's between NVidia and ATI (which it almost always is) then my allegiance is with ATI. Back when Nvidia was the undisputed top dog, i purchased their cards for a few of my rigs and two of the five i bought went south within the first week, and then one more went south about a year later. I'm sure they have vastly improved manufacturing and QC since then, but it's always left a bitter taste in my mouth. You'll also notice that ATI's top setups always run better than nVidia's (running dual crossfire 1900 vs quad sli and the dual crossfire's beat the quad setup hands down) since they have a slight upper hand being under ownership of AMD.

If you're playing graphic intensive games then it's worth upgrading to a high quality video card. It's a complete misconception that AGP's performance is inferior to that of PCI-E. While in completely ideal 64bit conditions AGP is inferior, but in almost all 32bit graphic conditions the performance "advantage" of PCI-E is negligible because 32bit processes cannot utilize the full bandwidth that PCI-E allows. If you plan on building a new 64bit machine running a 64bit game, then the performance will be very welcome, but you will also notice a lot of newer games are being built on 64bit platforms.

If it was Macross TV, i probably would've picked Minmei, if it was DYRL I would've picked Misa. They set up the love story more properly in DYRL? to make it believable for Hikaru to fall in love with Misa. In the TV series Minmei should've won the triangle, and just "accidentally" step on Kaifun with your Valkyrie while rebuilding Macross city.

I thought it was an Ascari with a face lift. Certainly lacks originality

I liked him as Han in Better Luck Tomorrow better.

I'd definitely support that Linksys is an awesome brand with a very good reputation and excellent QC, just prepare to spend about 15 dollars extra for similar equipment. I've also used D-Link and never had trouble with their wireless routers, but specific wireless cards might give you trouble. And i've only used one Belkin product and it actually worked great, but i've heard from other people that Belkin is a complete waste of space and should only be used in a dire emergency.

the first pic is a fugged up gallardo and the second pic (right) is just plain retarded looking.

I actually heard a lot of driver and compatibility issues with Vista that weren't caught. Adobe 6.0 and up have major issues with Vista and several other commonly used programs are showing compatibility issues, but MS is suppose to release a patch for them in about a month or so. I'm pretty much with Hurin, my current machine is keeping XP Pro; I'm building a machine in the near future which will adopt Vista, but it's not on my priority list right now.

Congratulations! Hope the wife is okay; an 11lb 11oz baby from a 5' woman is quite an accomplishment.

You got my vote! You and I live pretty close, we'll have to get Solscud to drive down to DC or something

I did it, but mine was slightly different/easier because i had my shoulders apart. You're creating room for the upper part of the joint that connects the shoulder to the swivel to move backwards in fighter mode. It doesn't ruin or affect its durability in any of the three modes.

very nice *edit* I tried it, and it works pretty good. Since i already had my shoulders apart, it was even easier to do.

yeah i have the funimation channel with verizon fios and it's cool that it's anime all day, but only about 1/8 of it is stuff you wanna watch.

I actually remember seeing that the first time watching the TV series with my wife; i immediately rewound and put it in slow mo to catch the name on the building.