Replies

New graphics cards are great, if your BIOS will handle them. I doubt NYC's IBM will handle the latest ones. A BIOS upgrade might work, if it is upgradeable and if IBM is still doing them, but as IBM is not noted as a graphics machine, I doubt many are available.

But, NYC, sixmil is right about the speed improvement being in graphics, if your computer will handle it.

Note - it is best to get a good 'clone', rather than a name brand, as clones are generally really upgradable compared to name brand machines. But some cheap ones can be a disaster. And name brands are made to sell by the millions and profit motive is there, not performance.

Computers are sort of like French wine - some are great, but some are garbage, and you need to know what you are doing. If you do, you can get some great buys.

Thanks for all the info! I already do periodic (at least once or twice a month) defragmenting. And I'm going to do the partition thing once I do my periodic back-up of important stuff on CDRW.

It's going to be quite a while before I can buy a whole new computer, so any discussions of pros and cons about that don't mean much for me right now, but I will take into consideration for future reference. :)

I did a BIOS upgrade the other day, and this is the BIOS info I was able to get from some program that gets all that info:

Manufacturer: Acer OEM
Date: 3/3/00
ROM Size: 256K
Chip set: Intel 440BX/ZX rev3
Super I/O chip: SMC70x or 80x

Does this tell you anything about whether or not I can use a new graphics card? Thanks once again!