Buying Questions and Gen. Tech questions- MD120 Atom 330 vs Acer Revo 1600

[CHUCKCHILLOUT]

Hello everyone!

I recently upgraded my PC this last Christmas from an ancient Dell Dimension 2.8 P4 256 RAM 533FSB 40GIG HD to a new Asus CG5270.

Now since I have an extra PC I'm thinking about giving it to my mom. It was so bloated I decided to put Ubuntu on it; just to see what it was like-having reformatted the HD, it is a lot quicker.

I also have an old Toshiba Satellite A45-S250 with 2.8 P4 512 DDR Ram 533/400 MHZ bus and a bad hard drive, so it won't boot.

I was wondering if maybe purchasing a new budget computer like the MD120, or an Acer Revo 1600 so when my Mom gets a new HDTV, she can stream videos, or Tv, and music via HDMI-plus those two systems are around 200-225, but I would have to get W7 for the MD120.

The MD120 is a dual core atom 330, and the Acer Revo 1600 is just a single core. If I was to resurrect the old PCs, I think I would need a new HD, at least 160 gig, 2 gig ram, and possibly a video card, and DVDRW, and windows 7 and a tv tuner.

Is it a total waste trying to put any money in those old machines? I remember the laptop was screaming fast about a 1.5 years ago when it worked. I thnk it has hyperthreading. I was wondering, aside from GPU, what is good moving forward for FSB, or bad for that matter in terms of bottlenecking. From what I read the P2.8 was a pretty great processor in it's time, and probably faster than the atom, but I think it's the old ram that gets it. Any helpful advice appreciated.

[TomFitzgerald]

A while back I would say go with the old, upgrade the RAM and stick with it until it dies. Lately with Windows 7 and the inexpensive hardware, I would say go with the new! Stuff is so cheap now and the Windows 7 streaming is awesome and easy. I'm kinda looking at the HP TouchSmart stuff. Looks pretty cool.