EggXpert

Hi I am looking for some suggestions on upgrading some pcs in my office.

The challenge is that thereis about two dozen Netvista M42 P4 machines with 160 watt proprietory power supplies that are an unusual size.

A larger power supply will not fit in the case.

These pcs are not gaming machines but used mainly for office applications, email and internet.

I would like to upgrade with low power cpus, motherboards, memory and utilize the  IDE harddrives,power supplies, case and optical.

My gut feeling is that I should probably try and get 1 more year out of them and then replace with new pcs ...however maybe there is a way

to make a sensible upgrade...

Thanks

Chris

There really isn't much you can do.  The IBM Netvista is really old. You did not list the exact model details, but I can see what your system has at best and at worst, and there isn't a whole breadth of difference.  Any upgrade components are already obsolete.

CPU upgrade: Impractical as you would have to buy used CPUs that would only be of limited speed improvement.  They are all Cerelon/ Northwoods 478 socket CPUs. Depending upon which motherboard your system has (and I see 10 possibilities) only some will be supprted even with the last BIOS update.

 Memory:  This you can do!  Order two 512Mb sticks or two 1Gb sticks per machine to max out the RAM.  Once again depends upon which motherboard is in your machine...some support 1Gb sticks, some do not.  Upgrading all machines to their full RAM capacity WILL do wonders, but it won't make an old dog fetch like a new one.

Video card:  Only PCI slots so we are talking really limited cards, and even then 160W (old to boot) you can't.  Even if your motherboard came with an AGP slot, the PSU kills any chance and it might not make much difference to a office machine.

Motherboard, CPU and RAM upgrade.  Yes this would make sense and you could get years of further use out of the shell...BUT the SFX or TFX style PSU makes that a bad waste of money.   Best to either upgrade RAM and installation for $60 each and your time, or bite the bullet and buy new PCs.

The further problem with new motherboards is: 1.  Virtually all come support zero to two IDE devices.  One HDD and one ODD.  That may not be a limitation, but your 160W PSU would be plugging its 20 pin power connector into a 24 pin motherboard connector -- it is designed to do that but I really hate that kind of underpowered engineering.  Additionally it must (and probably does) provide a additional P4 connector for the CPU...but does it?

Manual

 Downloads/ Drivers

 Product

 What you can do?

Update the BIOS to the latest.  Be darned sure you have the BIOS for the exact motherboard, or you destroy the motherboard.

Max the RAM (after updating the BIOS).

Then clean install all operating systems with latest drivers, and updates (slipstream it), either at once over the network on a weekend or a machine at a time.  I note your system came with either 2000 or XP.  

 Make sure all client software is updated as well. 

With RAM and a clean install you will get the final useful life out of the machines...but you really should talk them into a three year life cycle (replace one third of the machines every year...for tax reasons and to spread the pain out instead of what you have now --- really old machines).

Also make sure their power management is set as best as those machines can.  If they are S3 capable ACPI great.  If they are S1 or ARM do the best you can.  Monitors auto off after so many minutes of non-use, sleep mode or hibernation after so many minutes of non-use, system wide shutdown after hours if practical....

FacistNation is correct. RAM is your only worthwhile option as far as hardware upgrades go. However, there are things you can do on the software side to (sometimes dramatically) increase performance and decrease power costs. As mentioned, a clean OS install with newest BIOS and drivers is a good start. Also keep background processes/services at a minimum. Another option is to look for a Linux OS alternative geared towards older PC's (like Xubuntu). Linux is great when it comes to being very efficient on older systems. Most can quite easily find linux alternatives for many of their windows programs, and many are very similar (Open Office vs Microsoft Office). The advantages of going with Linux in your situation are worth a slight learning curve in my opinion. Specially now that there are many great Linux distributions which are geared towards windows users. Some advantages of going with Linux are:

1. Its more secure, and requires no Antivirus or spyware tools to run in the background (frees up huge resources, specially on old systems).

2. Linux can run with much less resources (less memory (as low as 60MB) and CPU usage on idle, which means things you really need run faster).

3. Security and software updates are given for free automatically. Like windows update, but can include ALL installed software, unlike on windows (MSoffice will not be updated without paying for example).

4. Support is free and very easy to get (linux is made by the community and supported by it too), there are huge Linux community sites and forums with millions ready to answer your technical questions (eg Linuxquestions.org) . Good luck with Microsoft support.

5. Its freely avaiable at no cost. You can even try it on a "Live CD" without installing anything to your HDD.

6. There are no license restrictions (can be copied and installed on an infinite number of systems). Go here for license info.

7. Source code is open to public, which means bugs are fixed faster, and customization options are endless.

Thanks for taking the time to provide a fantastic in depth response to my question and your great advice.

As you say upgrading these pcs with anything other than more ram is probably not practical.

If I found motherboard,memory and CPU that would work I would save the price on the case,hd,optical,ps and o/s etc...however I think I will go back

to the drawing board 

There is a fair number of newer machines, Thinkcentre core 2duo so I don't need to replace all of the pcs at once....thankfully

Usually I find new or redistributed pcs with o/s at around  400  from the outlet from time to time if I keep an eye out.....seems to be the best bang

for the buck

 

 

Thanks for your detailed response Magicmax ......... great suggestions ............. Linux wont run a certain internet based application that we use in my industry and my staff would burn me at the stake for suggesting something other than Windows. I have set up and run Linux  succefully as file and print servers in my offices in the past and they have run for many months without a reboot but  now I am running Microsoft  servers because of specialized software requirements.I havent tried out the latest versions of Linux ......perhaps some rainy weekend.Thanks again...cheers.

I completely understand, i have customers that just cannot go without Windows for the same reasons. There is hope though, more and more are demanding software to be less restrictive (run on multiple platforms). Same goes for hardware drivers, some companies (*ahem Canon *ahem) just plain turn a blind eye to Linux, and don't realize how many customers are lost because of it. Even Sony thought of Linux when making their Playstation 3, and gave the option to install a 3rd party OS on their first few models (many installed ubuntu on it and used PS3 as a desktop also). Dell has also started shipping PCs with Ubuntu installed. Things are changing rapidly now, so keep your options open, your PC needs should not be met with restrictions, but with endless possibilities ;).

The Linux idea is a great one, and the Live CD so your users can try it out is also good.  I have found I like Mint as it seems the most intuitive for an XP user to switch towards IMHO. 

OpenOffice whether for Windows or Linux kicks butt for the price (free, bless you Sun and Oo developers). 

If you have Windows software you have to run, there are Windows emulation Linux software (Wine), but I don't know how it would run on 1Gb or whether it will work on the software.

No matter the OS, I would still update the BIOS and max the RAM on every unit...as well as clean them out physically but that is me.

I will be ordering some ram and  updating the bios which should make those Netvistas a little more responsive for a few dollars and wring out a little more life out of them.When I replace them they will be donated to a good cause