The components in a barebone kit can vary but, as a minimum, include the
case with power supply already installed and a motherboard which has to be
installed. In most instances, a CPU is also included and may or may not come
with a heat sink and cooling fan all of which have to be installed. It can
be further enhanced with some RAM and even with other hardware. Again, all
of which have to be installed. Normally they do not come with hard drives,
operating systems, video cards, sound cards, keyboards, mice, monitors,
speakers, etc.

In your case, the barebone I referenced from Tiger Direct, has the case;
power supply; motherboard with onboard video, audio, and Ethernet; CPU with
heat sink and cooling fan; 512MB of RAM; and a CD-RW drive. The motherboard
could accommodate an AGP video card or a PCI video card. You would have to
reuse your hard drives; modem if you have a use for it; video card if it is
better than the onboard video (same with audio card, if any); floppy drive
if you will have a use for it: monitor: keyboard: and mouse.

Your computer came standard with Microsoft ME. Windows XP is a much more
stable system and, if you buy a new computer, it should have XP already
installed. The low price computers normally come with 256MB RAM and it
should be upgraded to 512MB for another $25 to $50 to satisfactorily run XP
applications.

Your right in that an upgrade from a 766 CPU to 800 or even 1000 is not a
significant upgrade. But if all you need to do is increase CPU speed to run
a particular program, spending about $25 on EBay for now and then saving for
a new computer will at least keep you going.

Tom Mayer


----- Original Message -----
From: "carmen strickland" <[log in to unmask]>


Sorry, I should have thought to ask. If I get a
barebones kit, what exactly do I have to add to it?
I've never quite understood that.

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