“It’s becoming a Gateway in name only!”
When you can’t afford a new computer, there’s a little alternative that these computers are built for but most people don’t think to exploit… the upgrade. Gotta love it, too… for less than $500, I’ve got a new 80 GB hard drive, 384 MB of RAM (up from 128), new speakers, and a new TV card. However, to take this alternate method, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you run the risk of screwing up what you’re putting in the computer, and also what you’ve already got in your computer. Though if you’re only replacing or adding most parts, it’s not very hard at all. People who used the IBM PS/2 back in the late 80s and early 90s were misled. The PS/2 had so many weird parts that only fit the PS/2. Everyone else’s computer was standardized. Witness the fact that when we replaced the floppy drive in the PS/2, the thing caught fire. In our old Gateway P5-90, we had to replace the floppy drive, and the worst thing to happen is that I didn’t get it completely flush with the rest of the computer front (stupid lack of coordination!). Still, there is one quarry in my computer that I leave for more expert hands… that of replacing my Pentium II processor with a Pentium 4 processor, completing my summer upgrade (which I’m going to be doing a little later this summer). Still, if you know what you’re doing (or know someone who knows what they’re doing), it’s a great way to take a three-year-old PC, and make it last another three or so.
Date posted: June 11, 2001