What do we do with our old computers.  In our office and storage we have at least 20 or so carcasses.  These are not road kill but computers we have taken off our customers hands after selling them new PC's or laptops.  Some where just old and sitting around so we offered to recycle them and perform a DOD wipe of their data.  

Let me tell you what we have been doing on the recycling side but before I do let me let you know that we take this seriously.  As I make this entry on our blog I am doing it on an old G3 PowerMac tower.  One of our clients had it sitting around gathering dust so I thought great PC for a my daughters.  They have an old iMac and their school uses Macs so I thought GREAT!  When I bought it back to the shop I thought "Let's see what we can do with this".  I upgraded the RAM from 256MB to 1GB, that helped a great deal.  I put in a DVD burner to replace the stock CD-ROM.  I then ordered a new processor taking it from a clunky 350MHz to a full 1GHz.  Needless to say I decided to make this my main PC.  

Yes, I do like Macs.  Growing up our schools used Macs.  During my college years I worked for the Palm Beach County library systems and worked on Macs.  Small confession, I purchased my first IBM PC compatible system my senior year in college.  I wrote most of my papers in college on an Amiga and a MacBook.  Needless to say I have an affinity for Macs.

 Well, with a little time, spare memory, spare DVD, a $109 CPU and a spare 19" widescreen LCD I have a very capable computer to use.  This same principle has been applied over the last year.  We have taken spare parts and put together computers for families that do not have the economic means to purchase a new computer for their children.  When we can we use the original Windows XP Home licenses that come with the PC's unless we are working with a little bit older PC.  With the PC's that are not that current we have installed an Open Source operating system called Ubunto.  By taking this approach we have been able to improve the lives of some families in our community, offer very inexpensive parts for some of our clients and prevent landfills from receiving more hard to decompose material.

 This is part of our green outlook.  Another part is building low power consumption computers.  But that is another blog entry. . . 

Computer Cases

Since there is such a wide range let’s look at where you arelooking to place your computer. The traditional tower case is typically placed underneath the desk orbesides the monitor.  Tower casesused to be large and bulky but you are now able to find tower cases that cancomfortably fit besides your LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor.  Another option is a desktop/towerunit.  This case comes in a slimform factor and can, usually, be positioned flat on your desk or on their sidetaking up less space than a tower. We have been selling a nice desktop that can easily fit behind and LCD goingback about six inches from the monitor. Again, look around.  Take alook at sites like www.newegg.com andbrowse their cases to get an idea of what you like.

Peripherals - Video, Sound, Etc.

While are great deal of motherboards include built in audioand sound you might need or want to add these on.  There are some, as mentioned earlier, that can include HDMIvideo out or digital audio outputs but you might want to go with a higher end videocard or sound card.  For those whowork with AutoCad you might look to invest in cards that have their owndedicated memory and higher end graphics processing unit made to handle thedemands of Autocad.

There are specialty add on cards that can add extra USBports or allow you to connect to newer eSATA hard drives.  Some video cards allow you to connectup to four monitors to enhance your day trading, programming, video editing orgraphic design needs. 

If you find that you will need this type of expansion Irecommend to go with a tower case versus a desktop case.  Most desktop cases require you to uselow form factor cards.  These cardsare not as widely available as regularly sized expansion PCI and PCI-Expresscards. 

In Conclusion

Hopefully this helps to get you started and gives you someideas and things to think about. The toughest thing is to figure out what you are going to buy.  The actual assembly of the computer isnot that bad.