Upgrade question on an OLD compaq

[hogarth]

A friend's parents have an old compaq presario 9546 that they want to upgrade(only want to use it for email and junk). I checked the specs and saw that it uses SIMMS in pairs. I checked around to see if I can buy some ram for this clunker and saw that there are name brand like kingston and crucial that make ram specifically for this machine. But the price is kinda high. I was wondering if you can use generic ram for this thing? Any comments would be great.

[Blu]

My understanding about Compaq and their RAM is this...

If you want Compaq to support your computer, you'll need to have all-Compaq, or Compaq certified parts. We had non-Compaq parts in our server, and it started having drive problems. When we called Compaq, they sent out a tech, and he wouldn't touch the machine until the non-Comcrap parts were removed.

So, you can use whatever RAM will work. It's not like you're planning on having Compaq helping....


Blu

[The Happy Squirrel]

Ill tell you the same thing i told my roommate when he asked what is the best way to upgrade his PacBell
You will need two thing to upgrade your computer

1: a sledgehammer
2: a credit card

and your good to go
i have a compaq 5050
and your cant it worth a damn
thats why i built a completly new system

you will ahve very little luck

expecially since i believe yours <like mine> has onborad sound and video which makes for trouble

[ApltnHkyMutt]

Your computer is a piece of junk, you should try selling it to some old lady who doesnt know the difference, and use the $ to buy a new system!

[clutchy]

sounds to me like your looking for a value system for your friends to baiscally surf the net and just clunk around. Honestly the market is almost perfect for that type of system right now. The kx133 chipset is supposed to be coming out fairly soon or is out right now. that chipset comes with integrated graphics and maybe integrated sound but that might be pushing it some. Supposed to be geared toward the value market while still maintaining the performance of the 133 chipset. I would either get yourself a duron 650 or a tbird 800, 850 whichever is cheaper i think they're both sub 100 or close the 750 is even cheaper good site being sharkyextreme for cheap ram and cheap processors, well the links to them. Basically i'm saying you can put yourself together a pretty decent system for them right now with barely spending any money, if you have a little knowledge of computers and how the parts work together you can build a decent system for a really decent price. Ram right now is the best deal i've seen 256 megs of pc133 cas3 for 47 bucks. You could probably put together a system for sub 500 or less depending on how money savvy you are.
processor tbird 750,$72
motherboard, 100, more or less
ram $47
hard disk $120 10,20gig
maybe sound sb live value $40
case $30
mouse keyboard $25
+misc. exp.
$430 plus whatever else u need. hope i could help good luck

[wga22]

Dont forget about the deals Dell is having now, you can get a dell machine for a good price. Chances are, someone with an older machine wont be computer savy enough to put one together. If your friends parents arent into computing enough to get a 500$ dell, then it could be because they have been wasting their time on that old machine.