I’ve had this one PC for 10 years now.  It’s undergone some upgrades since I initially purchased it back in January of ‘96.  Here’s what it came with (IIRC):

• Pentium 1 – 150MHz CPU
• 16 MB RAM
• 2(?) GB HDD
• 2D video card

Total cost for this monster:  > $3500.

In ‘98, I think, I upgraded the mobo+cpu+ram+hdd on this.  Basically, the only thing that remained of the old PC was the power supply and case.  Back then it got upgraded to a:

• AMD K6-2 350 MHz CPU
• 64 MB RAM
• 8.4 GB HDD
• 2D/3D video card (4 MB VRAM)

Pretty snazzy.  Ran Win9x like a charm.  Not so much WinXP when that eventually came out.  Since that major upgrade, I’ve added a new CPU (AMD K6-2 450 MHz) more PC133 RAM (it’s now got 640 MB) and it’s got more HDD space (70GB) and a good-for-its-generation video card (Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 – 64MB VRAM).  But the computer only serves 2 purposes:  print server and music server for my Roku Soundbridge.

Last Sunday, it served its last MP3 and printed its last document.  Now I’m in a bit of a quandry.  Do I purchase an ultra-cheap low-end machine to backfill this, or do I demote my current desktop to serve this function and get a new “high-end” PC as my main machine?

My main machine’s current specs:

• AMD Athlon XP 2700+ CPU
• 1.5 GB DDR2-400 RAM
• 330 GB HDD
• ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro 9800 w/128 MB VRAM (DVI-out only)
• Dual Layer DVD burner

The reason I’m balking is that a “low end” machine these days is hardly much worse than this.  Sure, I don’t get the big HDD or that much RAM, but the rest is fairly comparable.  Also, this machine is going to find a bit rough running Vista, unfortunately.

As I see it, I have 2 options:

1. Backfill low – keep my current machine and backfill the “server”.  From the looks of it, this will cost me about $400 after factoring in an inevitable HDD upgrade.  I can run XP MCE on such a machine and not only serve up music to the Roku, but also pictures and video to the Xbox 360.  The downside is that I will probably be looking at a main machine upgrade when Vista RTMs since I’m not going to want to run it on a “classic” PC.  That will almost certainly cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200 at the time which makes this total purchase $1600 or so.
2. Demote and backfill high – This means demoting my current main machine.  More than enough power there to run XP MCE easily.  However, to get enough headroom in today’s PC to ensure I have Vista strength, probably looking at closer to $1700+ for a PC today.  This option runs the risk of being on the low-end of Vista-capable.  Unfortunately, you cannot test drive PC’s at home for a few days before buying.

I need to decide relatively quickly.  We have no printing alternatives that work well, plus it’s a drag not having the streaming music.