[nflug] where to get hardware locally (& how to upgrade hardware I do have)

[Steve Petersen]

Hi NFLUG!

I recently moved to Buffalo - I teach philosophy at Niagara University.
I've been using linux for about seven or eight years, first RedHat, and now
more recently Ubuntu/Xubuntu.  I'm still a novice when it comes to
understanding many *nix things, though; for example, I've never manually
recompiled the kernel.  I'm mainly in it for the ideological reasons, the
command line, and for the occasional tinkering under the hood.

First, thanks for what looks like an active and helpful community!

My current problem:  I have an "old" computer in my office (I think it's a
750 MHz AMD chip, 250M RAM).  It's running Xubuntu 6.06, and even that
lightweight OS is proving too taxing for it.  I think it's all the tabbed
browsing in firefox I do ... I want firefox though, for all the awesome
plugins (like adblock and scrapbook).

Anyway I'd like to upgrade / buy a new computer.  So I wonder two things:
1. where you might recommend cheap, good computer parts locally.  I live
near North & Elmwood in Allentown.  I also wonder 2.  what might be the best
way to upgrade.  I know how to scavenge hard drives, power supplies, CDROM
drives etc pretty well - I just get nervous when it comes to mixing &
matching chips, motherboards, RAM, and the like.  I don't understand
intercompatibility isuses there well at all.  In the past I would just buy a
new case, motherboard, chip and RAM as a compatible set from a store, and
then plug in old hard drives, CDROMS, and peripherals.  But I'd like to
learn yet-more economical ways, if worth the time.

My office tasks tend to be firefox, emacs, latex, acroread, thunderbird,
gnumeric, unison, and some mp3-playing in Xubuntu's lightweight xfmedia.
Sometimes OpenOffice, ideally.   Do you think just buying more RAM will be
enough?  (Are they likely still to sell the kind I need?)  Do I need to
upgrade the chip, you think?  And does that mean the motherboard too?  How
can I be sure the motherboard will seat in the case well?  Is it worth
learning to replace chips?  How can I tell the wattage of powef supply and
fanspeeds I need?  And so on.

Any thoughts / helpful links / anecdotes are appreciated; tia.

Steve
-- 

http://stevepetersen.net
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