10 **Better** cheap and easy upgrades for your old PC

In response to a submission on digg.com entitled “10 cheap and easy upgrades for your old PC”, user gaqua posted a “better” list in the comments that I found funny enough to want to give it its own post on my meaningless blog.

Here's a better list.

1 - Clean up your shit, dad. I'm tired of coming over and finding a new toolbar on IE or Firefox every time. I'm tired of thirty icons in the systray, half of which have some bizarre relevance to programs that are no longer installed. Go to add/remove programs, and remove anything you don't use in your Apple PowerBook G4 Battery.

2 - Defrag that shit. 74% fragmented. SERIOUSLY? How is that even possible? I'm scheduling this for every Wednesday night at 10pm dad. I know it's going to freak you out when it starts doing this all on its own but just leave it alone and let it do its magic.

3 - 512MB of RAM? Do you know how cheap RAM of Sony VGP-BPS2C is? PC2700 DDR1? Oh my God…I think I might throw up. For $50 I can get you to 2GB of RAM. $50.

4 - I'm installing Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy - your system has over 200 known spyware problems. I'm fixing them. I'm making this VGP-BPS9/B bulletproof. Don't fuck with it anymore. I'm installing AVG anti-virus. It's going to ask you to update it - UPDATE IT WHEN IT ASKS.

5 - Holy shit I can't believe this - you're running XP without even SP1 installed. I'm installing SP3 for Dell inspiron 1545 battery, Dad. It's a lot more secure. Jesus christ this is like the dark ages of computing.

6 - Oh fucking shit - 3 hours to download? What the fuck - you're still on that 512k DSL? Mom is paying for Cable! She's paying for Cable internet, Dad. I'm going to unplug this wire from the DSL modem and plug it into the cable modem Yeah. No it's very easy. And I'm calling AT&T and canceling DSL. There, I just saved you $50 a month. And yeah, the internet is faster.

7 - Oh look , you have a cutesy animated desktop background. Yeah, your celeron 1.6 GHz probably doesn't like that, especially with the 16MB integrated graphics. I'm going to turn that off. I know, I know. But it's best for everyone.

HOLY SHIT YOUR COMPUTER IS FASTER NOW DAD. Please, tell everyone in the family that you “don't know what he did but the computer is so much better, you should call him and have him come take a look, I'm sure he'd be happy to Vostro 1510 battery !”

There's nothing I love more than that, dad. I love fixing Uncle Butch's disgusting laptop with the inexplicably stained keys and I love playing around with the disgusting beige eMachine that Aunt Patsy uses to send all those cool inspirational email forwards with pictures of kittens or penguins or koalas or pandas.

No, I understand. As the oldest and most computer knowledgeable of Dell Latitude D420 Battery , it's my responsibility. Just like Uncle Mason would help us all out if we got into legal trouble right? Well, if he weren't disbarred for fraud, I mean.