[js1138]

I just upgraded my daughter's PC. Motherboard $130, Athlon 2000+ $106, 768 megs DDR memory $120 at CompUSA, Western Digital 80 gig drive $90 after rebates. Complete reinstall of Win2000 and all programs, priceless.

Some of these items were at unusual sale prices, but anyone could come within $100 of this system price without even shopping.

This system loads MS Word in under half a second. The need for all the memory comes from heavy Photoshop use.

I seldom upgrade older computers, except to add memory. They can be sold or given to friends or relatives or schools.

The reason you need a new motherboard is to recognise all the new hardware, to get USB 2.0, to enable use of ATA100 drives, etc. You can get a great AMD motherboard, CPU and 512 megs memory for under $250.

[savedbygrace]

CompUSA has a special going on the Western Digital 200GB drives. It ends tomorrow, but they give you a $100 Rebate, bringing the total down to $219. For a 200GB, 8MB cache, hard drive.