What can I mix-n-match?
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:58 am
Not sure that I have mentioned before that I have inherited two desktop computers.
One is a DELL Dimension 4700C
The other is a DELL Dimension 8400
They are a few years old, obviously.
I was looking at specs and it seems that both have strong and weak points. The 8400 has a big hard-drive (80gb), a relatively fast cpu (3.6ghz), and a good video card (I guess?).
The 4700 has twice the RAM, a DVD burner, and I can't find much more information.
My goal is to wipe clean the OS and start fresh with Windows XP Professional. My first question comes from that. Is XP-Pro the "best" OS to run? It seems to be the one most widely used and the one that I'll probably have the best results with. I don't know that I'd like Vista and I don't even know if the computer would be capable of running it. I hear it's a resource hog and that it asks you eleventy billion times if you are sure you want to do what you told the computer to do.
What can I mix-n-match between the two? The 4700 has 1GB of RAM and I'd like to harvest it in addition to the RAM on the 8400 now (512mb I think). I'd also like to snag the hard-drive and run two hard-drives.
Ideally, I'd really like to run two monitors (since I have two identical DELL monitors as well), so can I simply plug the video card from the 4700 into the 8400 and go from there?
The 4700 has a DVD burner, and the 8400 has only a CD burner and a DVD-Rom. The drives look different, faceplate wise (the 4700, thanks to the 'c' suffix, has what looks like a laptop drive). Thoughts and ideas, or is it truly not worth it?
I'm sure I can't run both processors, right?
I also have a Toshiba laptop that has seen better days. I'd like to dump everything from it onto the desktop and then see if I can clean it out to speed it up a lot (simply for internet and word-processing use).
I would probably map the desktop upstairs so I could access files on it from my laptop if need be.
Can XP-Pro enable remote desktop? And if so, how does that actually work? I can basically use the desktop from my laptop anywhere, as if I were using my desktop? How horrifically slow would that end up being?
I'm not much a gamer but I do have a little bit of music that I'd like to listen to. I'd also like to try and score a copy of ProEngineer and a windows version of MATLAB (I have the apple version) and be able to effectively run those programs at their limits.
What plan of attack should I follow? The idea is to keep this as free as possible. I got the computers for free and I don't have the money to throw into computers. I just want it to work and be reasonably quick.
One is a DELL Dimension 4700C
The other is a DELL Dimension 8400
They are a few years old, obviously.
I was looking at specs and it seems that both have strong and weak points. The 8400 has a big hard-drive (80gb), a relatively fast cpu (3.6ghz), and a good video card (I guess?).
The 4700 has twice the RAM, a DVD burner, and I can't find much more information.
My goal is to wipe clean the OS and start fresh with Windows XP Professional. My first question comes from that. Is XP-Pro the "best" OS to run? It seems to be the one most widely used and the one that I'll probably have the best results with. I don't know that I'd like Vista and I don't even know if the computer would be capable of running it. I hear it's a resource hog and that it asks you eleventy billion times if you are sure you want to do what you told the computer to do.
What can I mix-n-match between the two? The 4700 has 1GB of RAM and I'd like to harvest it in addition to the RAM on the 8400 now (512mb I think). I'd also like to snag the hard-drive and run two hard-drives.
Ideally, I'd really like to run two monitors (since I have two identical DELL monitors as well), so can I simply plug the video card from the 4700 into the 8400 and go from there?
The 4700 has a DVD burner, and the 8400 has only a CD burner and a DVD-Rom. The drives look different, faceplate wise (the 4700, thanks to the 'c' suffix, has what looks like a laptop drive). Thoughts and ideas, or is it truly not worth it?
I'm sure I can't run both processors, right?
I also have a Toshiba laptop that has seen better days. I'd like to dump everything from it onto the desktop and then see if I can clean it out to speed it up a lot (simply for internet and word-processing use).
I would probably map the desktop upstairs so I could access files on it from my laptop if need be.
Can XP-Pro enable remote desktop? And if so, how does that actually work? I can basically use the desktop from my laptop anywhere, as if I were using my desktop? How horrifically slow would that end up being?
I'm not much a gamer but I do have a little bit of music that I'd like to listen to. I'd also like to try and score a copy of ProEngineer and a windows version of MATLAB (I have the apple version) and be able to effectively run those programs at their limits.
What plan of attack should I follow? The idea is to keep this as free as possible. I got the computers for free and I don't have the money to throw into computers. I just want it to work and be reasonably quick.
