wasting money on old computers

[mikee]

Does anyone here ever end up keeping their computer so long and just buying pointless parts just to make it work? I ask this because I have a friend with a fairly old computer which has had the hell upgraded out of it when clearly the money could have been spent on a new computer.

The computer originally was a AMD Athlon xp 2700 1 gb ram, 200gb hdd geforce ti 4200, windows xp home

Now it is

AMD Athlon xp 2700
2gb ram
Geforce fx5500
!tb sata HDD
masscool Sata controller card ( to make the 1TB drive work)
180 GB ide hdd
250GB ide hdd
Sound blaster live 5.1
Windows vista home premium

So you see it has changed a heck of alot

Is anyone else like this with their computers?

 

[01001010]

What would you define as old?

 

[Cabbs]

Edit: Does putting unnecessary aftermarket heatsinks count?

 

[Sinonymous]

I usally buy a new pc but the specs on that pc originally fine for my use of pc's.

 

[muz]

that isnt that bad because he didn't really waste money with the hard drive cos he can put that in another computer
same with the sound card
besides if thats all he really needs then why build a new rig

 

[LukaszR1]

i usually try to keep my computer working for as long as they can. But if it ends up costing me more then about the same price of a new system, i buy a new computer

 

[Tommy Boy]

Does anyone here ever end up keeping their computer so long and just buying pointless parts just to make it work? I ask this because I have a friend with a fairly old computer which has had the hell upgraded out of it when clearly the money could have been spent on a new computer.

The computer originally was a AMD Athlon xp 2700 1 gb ram, 200gb hdd geforce ti 4200, windows xp home

Now it is

AMD Athlon xp 2700
2gb ram
Geforce fx5500
!tb sata HDD
masscool Sata controller card ( to make the 1TB drive work)
180 GB ide hdd
250GB ide hdd
Sound blaster live 5.1
Windows vista home premium

So you see it has changed a heck of alot

Is anyone else like this with their computers?

Hey, if it works for what he is using it for.......

Besides the hard drives, controller card and sound card aren't a waste of money. Perhaps upgrading an AGP vid card is, but thats it.

Now, if he put a ton of money into that pc for stuff like watercooling or case mods or big aftermarket heatsinks and psu's that aren't necessary, then I'd say that was a waste of money.

 

[mikee]

actually it doesn't work for what hes using it for which is playing movies on a high definition 50" tv. It works for about 5 min then the computer just randomly restarts.

He just told me he's looking into getting one of those agp 3870 ati cards. I don't think thats nessesary because he doesn't game anymore.