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I have just received a new laptop purchased at Best Buy. My new signature spells out its specs. I needed Windows 8 because a class I am taking uses Excel 2013, and that requires Windows 7 or 8 only.

My question concerns my aging Windows XP desktop. It is a single-core AMD Athlon 2800 with 2GB of RAM, a 300GB and a 2TB HDD, a GeForce 6200, a SB Live! soundcard, and a 23" Viewsonic TN monitor. Should I replace this old desktop with just the notebook, or should I seek/build a replacement desktop within the next three months?

Thank you in advance for your solutions.

Your existing monitor and your 2.0 TB hard-drive can be saved (and used in an external USB 3.0 enclosure). The rest of that stuff isn't worth bothering with.

Try your new laptop for a month before you decide whether or not you need a separate desktop.

If that was your current desktop system then I'm guessing you probably don't do any recent gaming? In which case, any reason to bother upgrading it right now? The only thing I would suggest is to max out the ram, and maybe try out Windows 7 32-bit in order to get past the numerous security issues associated with continuing to run XP. But you might need to disable Aero to get acceptable performance.

Not all period computers can run Win7; for example, my old Socket-A system had an nForce2 chipset and there was no Vista+ IDE driver for it (not with the OS nor on Nvidia's website), and the board didn't have any SATA ports. I think the same is true of the nForce3 chipset.

ludi wrote:

If that was your current desktop system then I'm guessing you probably don't do any recent gaming? In which case, any reason to bother upgrading it right now? The only thing I would suggest is to max out the ram, and maybe try out Windows 7 32-bit in order to get past the numerous security issues associated with continuing to run XP. But you might need to disable Aero to get acceptable performance.

Well, something that old is probably kind of sluggish even for day-to-day browsing on today's media-rich web.

@OP - I'd say wait and see if the new laptop is good enough for everything you do. If not, then think about building a modern system around budget components. You've clearly got pretty modest needs desktop-wise, so a micro-ATX mobo, AMD APU, and 4GB of RAM should be leaps and bounds ahead of that old Athlon XP in terms of performance, while remaining quite affordable.

If you're looking to upgrade that desktop, I have a nearly complete AMD system I'm looking to sell. All it needs is a HDD and it should be good to go.
IIRC it's...
Athlon II 635
Gigabyte 770 based Mobo
2GB OCZ ram
450/500w Coolermaster PSU
HD4870

I do have a case for it that's fairly old, but it was a case I had a lot of love for due to it's removable motherboard tray.

You could make that desktop a headless server if you want to keep it around. Otherwise, I would save the hard drives and donate/recycle the rest of the parts.

As for if you need to build another desktop, maybe. It really depends on what you want to do. High amounts of RAM (32GB+) will be easier to do in a desktop. A faster video card with outputs for lots monitors (4+) will be easier to do with a desktop. Lots of hard drives will be easier to do in a desktop. Desktops are nice for long running programs. You can set the program then check on them using the laptop.

Outside of extreme outliers, your new laptop should work fine. Setup a dock, and you should be good.

Obviously this: http://youtu.be/wvBOUy9E5Qw?t=18s

lol

Eh. That machine falls into a grey area. It's still plenty fast for general productivity and web-browsing, but it's not worth spending a Windows 7 license on it. With XP on it's way out in April, that's off the table as well. My vote is to install Ubuntu and donate to a school or charity. Keep the 2TB and the monitor. Plug the laptop into the monitor when you want to use it in desktop mode.