Delay purchasing that new computer system for 8-12 months!

Introduction
My history with computers(I call them puters).
In 1979 I saw my first Apple on TV and was hooked but money was tight, had to wait for three and a half years....
In 1982 I got a Sinclair Spectrum it had a maximum of
48 kilobytes of RAM, 16 colors,the sound came from a very
small speaker inside the unite and a cable to hook to the TV.
loading programs witch was sold on a audio cassette(s) and took about four minutes to transfer by any cassette player to the puter.
the only negative aspect was the need for three hands, don't
forget I am the Spazz!!!
The Sinclair Spectrum was great for the price, $120 for the unite and $3-5 per program.

my cousins(on my mother's side) was
using the commodore 64(1983)

but I had my eye on a I.B.M. PC, so I up-graded after 2 years to a
ZX Sinclair SPECTRUM Plus(1984).

In late 1984 I finely got my
IBM PC XT
512k RAM
cpu - Intel 8088 (4 Mhz.)
BUS 8 bit
2 - 5.25"floppy + 10 mb.hdd
CGA-16 COLORS
12 in. I.B.M. monitor
dos ver 1.0
cost $4,500

from there as time went on I upgraded the system, spent a
ton of money on programs, dabbled in all sorts of programming languages
and came to a realization that I lacked the mind for programming.
In 1994 - IBM clone x386
in 1999 pc with a pantum 2 (400 MHz.)
(this is the puter being used to write this, surfing
the net, and for everyday. I record and edit sound,
do my art work on this 6 year old system.

My main muscle system is a AMD Athlon 1300
and is networked by CAT 5 cable
the reasons are:
the high Radio Frequency Interference(RFI)and security.
thanks to:
http://www.old-computers.com/
for the pictures.

Main article:

Computer systems comes in two sections HARDWARE and SOFTWARE.
On the hardware part we have many options and this is good.
On the software we have one big problem, it is the Operating System(OS).
The Microsoft Corp. is the main supplier of the OS running on 87 per cent
of all home PCs, Vista(out on beta)
will be ready in end of the year or early next year as this OS
is very new product it will have many bugs(Windows XP had
65 thousand bugs!!) so I personalty not buy any new system
well into winter of next year.
If your system is older then 7 years and you absolutely need a new system
go and get the least expensive(make sure to have at least
1 gig RAM and a good graphics card, Vista will be demanding)
If your system is like mine or newer, you can improve by up-grading(adding more RAM, geting a larger hard drive and a larger monitor(19 in. crt).
but before doing the above BACK-UP ALL YOUR DATA,
EMAIL, BOOKMARKS AND NOTE ALL THE SETTINGS.
if you feel this is to daunting get help!
1.) do a full format of your hard drive(this will destroy all data)
2.) do a fresh install of windows(try to install only the applications
you need.
3.) restart windows in safe mode and defragment the hard drive
(do this on a regular basis)
4.) make sure only the software you need is running on start up.
(note you will notice your system will be running better and faster)
5.) add more RAM(a stick of 256Mb will improve your system).
6.) a larger hard drive(80gig)will be plenty.
7.) if you do not have a cd-r(cd writer)get one, you can back-up
the data on the hard drive and freeing space.
(cd-r are sold in internal and external).
8.) a larger monitor(19 in. CRT is cheaper)will add better experience.
9.) if you listen to music from your computer up-grade your speakers

Next year when you get that new system, the system you have done the up grade,
can be used as a second or as a back-up system.
good luck and if in doubt get help.