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I got the impression from OP that he was on a fixed income and not able to upgrade very easily. Also, with a system that old, he might have issues finding RAM, and his motherboard might not support more than a gig of RAM. Just because a DIMM fits doesn’t mean the system can use/support it.

Also, as far as “legality” in Linux for media codecs, I never claimed that Linux was ideal for use as a media center. That being said, there are PLENTY of publicly-available distributions of Linux with media center support using XBMC, for instance. It sounds like OP wants a machine that he can use for web browsing and email. Media was not mentioned unless I completely glanced over it.

Thanks for your input, which was quite a bit on this thread and speaks to the willingness to help and the interest in this issue among FReepers.

I was thinking of my route as told in the link i first gave, which was with with a 8 years PC last year, 2.8ghz dual core 64 bit Intel and 4gb ram. But the mobo could not make use of more than 3.5 which the 64bit architecture can.

Linux was not the best option due to all that i can and do use Windows to do, so i tested my PC with the evaluation tool and the evaluation copy of W/8. Then i was able to buy the W/8 pro upgrade, with free media center upgrade (after), for 29.00 from NewEgg (40.00 Visa rebate). Which came with both 23 and 64 bit actual DVDs. No download.

I knew that promo price was exceptional, and later someone wanted to give me money for a new PC to replace the 8 year old Sony workhorse used about 12 hours a day (this is a nonprofit work), which replacement i prayerfully bought (ASRock 970 EXTREME3 mobo; AMD 6350 3.9ghz 6 core 64bit cpu; 8gb ram for under 600) which i hope will last another 8 years. And no OS was needed as the W.8 license allows you to remove it from one PC and installed it on another, which b4 was limited to retail ver$ions. So thank God.

The old Sony PC has Linux on it now instead of XP, and i just installed Peppermint on a Compaq nx9005, 1.67 cpu, 512 ram (Fedora, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu would not work right on it) and i also installed Xubuntu on a Travelmate 2480 (1.87 cpu; 2gb ram) to dual boot with XP, and it boosts almost as fast as XP. And the laptop itself is much much faster than the Compaq, even though the basic specs are quite similar.