Again, the critical question is "What do want the computer to do?" Lady Hillary and I have a current stable of a Dell 750, a custom built machine, 3 active laptops and a batch of laptops under reconstruction.

They range in speed from a P III with a clock speed of 850 through a core duo that I happened to pick up which needed rebuilding. Not one of them has a chip speed of greater than 2.8 ghz. All of them do their jobs without complaining. The other day, the P III suddenly slowed down dramatically. I immediately backed up my data and made a list of the programs installed, just in case the hard drive was getting set to pack it in or a program was sick. I then took it to my local Staples to check it out. We shortened the start up menu and added memory. The comment of the kid behind the counter was "Gee, that's almost an antique. Everyone else is using Core 3, 4 or 5." He was helpful but, as I am not a gamer, I saw no need to spend money to step up to the plate.