• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Retasking old PC for parents' use

DarkRogue

DarkRogue

Golden Member
Hello,

I'm thinking about retasking my old PC for my parents to use. Mainly, they want to be able to chat with their relatives online via webcam. The problem is I have no idea what type of peripherals are good for this because I never bothered with it.

First, I need to get the old PC working again. I was originally planning on turning it into a file server, but that never happened, and I ended up shoving 7 hard drives into my main PC instead (with a couple externals for backup.) The old PC has thus sat in a corner of my room gathering dust for the past year and a half.

It was my old main PC, so it's decently specced for simple web surfing and webcamming, I'd assume. It has an Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo (Rev 1.04) with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, as well as 1GB of DDR333 in an odd configuration (2x256mb + 1x512mb) and an old ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. I want to get this thing up with as little spending as possible, since most of the parts are already here. I considered getting a lower power video card, but AGP cards are scarce, and even the cheapest ones (like $40) aren't worth it in terms of power savings. It does need a PSU, but I'm thinking I'll toss in my current PSU and get myself another one since I've wanted to go modular. Hard drives are all gone, but I may be able to bum an old one (either IDE or SATA) from my friend. It does have a floppy drive, as well as 2 optical drives (1 DVD-ROM and 1 CD Burner.) Sound, I do have an old Audigy, but I don't think I'll bother with it, and just use the onboard. I also have a logitech keyboard and MX500 mouse, as well as the LCD I just upgraded from and a set of old 2.1 speakers to round out the package.

I believe the only major thing I'm missing is a good webcam, and an OS.
Webcam I'm completely overwhelmed by. There seem to be a bunch of options from Logitech, Microsoft and Creative, but they all strike me as having buggy drivers and software. Does anyone have any recommendations as to which to get here? I have no idea what software they will want to use, nor the quality limits imposed by them, so I'm not sure if I should just go for "max quality" or not. Of course, bandwidth will play a factor here, and so as to not disrupt the network too much, I may limit upload to around 10kB/s (Not sure how much is needed.)

OS is another thing I'm undecided about. being that they're completely new to computers and the internet in general, I'm thinking something of at least Win7 for security purposes. Unfortunately, I was never a fan of Vista (though 7 piques my interest) so I never made the switch myself. I'm in no way ready to make the move over to Win7 on my main PC either (I may give it a try on my laptop though) so my concerns would be that I would be unable to provide sufficient technical support when the situation arises (and I know it will come up.) The other problem is they don't understand English, so I will need to translate the UI as well. I know Vista was particularly stubborn about this (MUI only worked in Ultimate edition - I expect Win7 to be the same.) I'm not sure if any MUI packs are out yet though. Besides that, can I even run Win7 with such ancient hardware and only 1GB of ram? I tried briefly to search for more ram, but it's ludicrously expensive now, and I'd rather not spend $70 for 2gb of old ram.

On the other end, I can continue using the ancient XP, as I know quite decently enough how to work with it, and the MUI for it is less picky. The problem here is XP is pretty insecure IMO for people new to computers/internet.

Anyone have any ideas, or something I may have missed in my build/retask?

EDIT:
I forgot to mention another important thing: I need a wireless card as well.
I don't feel like running a massive ethernet cable through several rooms, so I figured I'd just throw in a wireless card instead. My router is currently a Dlink DGL-4300, which I believe is ABG - no N. I may upgrade to N in the future though. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
 
Oh - also,
I have 256MB (Might help...) Corsair XMS DDR400 C2 I would ship to you for a fair price, and a PCI Linksys G card (haven't seen it in a while, but I should have it in a box). If you are interested, look that stuff up and PM with a fair offer. I don't have time to look it up.

Also, I ran Win7 Beta on my dinosaur socket 754 system with 1GB and it worked. The only issue I had was with M-Audio's 64-bit drivers.

I also have something that might help with the language gap in Win7 (PM me).
 
the more you add to make it a snappy machine that welcomes newbies with both ease of use, nice interface, snappy response the closer you come to just buying a new pc. even the cheapest dell would dance circles around an old pc, esp a dual core one. its probably just better to buy a cheap barebones dell with win7, and toss in a nice 22" or bigger wide screen.. i remember reading that newbies do better navigating guis on large screens, plus its confortable to use. a scary or pain in the ass computer that rarely gets used doesn't save any money. athlon xp is dog slow, not worth restoring. its bits and pieces are old, somethings bound to start failing whether its the hd or some other bit.
 
I think you've got to pick from one of two ways...

Either spend literally as **little** as possible on this build, meaning no new parts, just leave it "as-is".
OR
Buy a cheapo Dell (or other OEM) that has Vista/Win7 on it.

If you find yourself spending over $100 on this project, I'd just get a new one.

If you're parents are literally just surfing the web, checking email, and webcamming and you want to keep them as secure as possible, I'd look really hard at linux. Ubuntu is really easy to install, you won't need anymore RAM, immune to windows viruses (obviously), and firefox works a treat. You would just have to do a little research to see which webcams work with linux.
 
yea thats a file server pc. nothin more at this point.
i'd prefer to teach them windows, its more transferable a skill for the average person.
 
I'd leave the computer as is. That's a sweet machine for basic tasks. Win7 will run great on that, but I like the Linux idea. It'll help a lot with security, and it's as easy as Windows to run, especially for a new computer user. With Linux you'll have to do some homework with the wireless card and webcam, but you should be able to find something that would work well.
 
Thanks for all the responses guys. That Linux idea actually sounds pretty good, and I hadn't thought of it at all. The only problem is I have almost zero experience with Linux or its many incarnations, so it'd be kind of overwhelming to me; not the mention trying to figure out how to teach my parents how to use it, and in a different language, no less. Part of the reason I was going to go with Windows was because I'm already familiar with it, and with XP, I can simply toggle the MUI back to English to troubleshoot any problems. I am aware of the benefits of linux though - a friend of mine created some sort of bootable DVD with Linux and some basic apps on it.

Anyway, for now, I'll say I'll try to stick with Windows. I like the linux idea, but I am just too clueless about it, and I don't have enough time right now to read through all the documentation and figure out all the commands. Whether I use XP or 7 though, is still up in the air. To toss another wrench into the works, I do have a copy of XP sitting around, but none for 7 - I'll have to buy one.

ChaiBabbaChai - I may be interested in what language thing you have for Win7 if I decide to go that route, I'll keep it in mind. That is also one hell of an expensive webcam.

OrooOroo - I do know that even new budget machines would run circles around it, but the needs for this PC really are miniscule, and this is running off hardware that used to be my "main" PC used for everything from work to gaming. For simply chatting and loading firefox, I don't think I'd even need a dual core for it. The main problem is it might not be enough for Win7.

The other point I should bring up is, I've kept this thing in the corner of the room for a while, and they don't like me hoarding stuff, lol. So they want me to make use of it, rather than buy another Dell and add another metal box to the collection.

Actually, even if I went Win7, I forgot to check if it'll even have any mobo drivers compatible with it.
 
Ubuntu's pretty easy, and there isn't a ton of learning involved. If you want to stick with Windows, Win7 would be best imo. I have it on my daughter's machine(P4 3.06ghz, 1gb ram, GF6800), and it runs great.
 
this is the webcam I have, it works really well, but it doesn't have an included microphone. I paid less than $20 for it.

Good color/resolution/low light sensitivity.
 
Thanks Larry.
I think I should get one with a microphone though.. even though I'm 99% sure it'll be a crappy microphone and sound like shit, it would be one less thing to buy and one less wire running around, lol.

Yeah I'll look into Ubuntu, but at least for my parents, I don't want to get into it. I'd like to actually have tested it first before I let my parents have at it. If something comes up, I'll be unable to fix it since I'm unfamiliar with it.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a good justification for $350 for a copy of Windows 7 though (need Ultimate for the MUI) when I have an unused copy of XP lying around here for $0...
 
think almost free +$5-$9 shipping, when you think about my XMS and Linksys G. 😀 I just want to get rid of them, but they aren't garbage just yet.
 
Originally posted by: DarkRogue
Thanks Larry.
I think I should get one with a microphone though.. even though I'm 99% sure it'll be a crappy microphone and sound like shit, it would be one less thing to buy and one less wire running around, lol.

Yeah I'll look into Ubuntu, but at least for my parents, I don't want to get into it. I'd like to actually have tested it first before I let my parents have at it. If something comes up, I'll be unable to fix it since I'm unfamiliar with it.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a good justification for $350 for a copy of Windows 7 though (need Ultimate for the MUI) when I have an unused copy of XP lying around here for $0...
Click to expand...

XP doesn't have multi languages does it? You don't /have/ to get Win7 Ultimate. I guess it would be nice in your case for the language support, but not essential. Win7 would be more modern and secure. You should be able to get a oem copy of home for about $100
 
XP did have an MUI, but it was for business only, I think. Vista and Win7 made them "public" but only for users of the Ultimate edition.
I know I don't have to get Win7 though, but the perks are there and would be nice - at least it should be more secure and the GUI would be easier to handle for their first computer I think, but I'll see what happens.
As it stands, there don't seem to be any official Vista/Win7drivers for the nForce2 chipset, so it may not even be an option.

Thanks again for the offer ChaiBabbaChai, I'll have to sleep on it for a bit though; I'm not quite sure where exactly to take this just yet.
There's a possibility they may just want a laptop/netbook instead (they don't have very much room - my tower + everything would take up most of their desk space.)
 
No problem either way. It would be nice if I or anyone else could get some use out of this stuff. Thanks for your consideration. A "dual core" laptop from outlet.dell.com would be about 2x the price of Win7 Ultimate, but that may be worth it. It depends what they have in stock, too.
 
Just a quick note about ubuntu... It won't take you long to download the install ISO and burn to CD/DVD. It has a "live CD" feature where it will run off of the CD without actually installing anything. That way you can try it out on your own computer (or the old machine). There is no need to read any sort of documentation whatsoever. You just follow the prompts for install (which you would be doing), setup wifi if necessary (you would be doing) or just plug in a cable. Then the *only* thing you need to teach your parents is to click on the firefox icon in the upper left corner. That's it. Nobody needs to know any linux commands or anything else funky if you're just surfing the web and checking email. Install. Click on firefox. That's it. If you've ever seen a Mac desktop, that's exactly what it looks like.

For Win7, if you go that route, if it will run XP it will run Win7. Win7 is much "lighter" than Vista, giving you the same and more "eye-candy" but just overall is a lot more responsive. More than likely, Win7 has the drivers needed out of the box. I've installed it on a couple laptops, and a couple old desktops without issue.

If you do decide to get a new machine, you can always donate this one to a local church or something. There's always groups lookoing for older (working) computers to give to those who can't afford it. Plus you get a little tax credit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top