For the computer geeks.

I have the original EMachines install disc that has windows ME on it. MY 10Gig hard drive has all my os stuff and games. I have a 20Gig with MP3's and other files. Also the 20Gig has a web page on it because the computer doubles as a webserver for my car audio business.

just wanted to suggest pricewatch.com to compare prices.

http://www.newegg.com <--- amazing

The system I am currently amidst building =

CPU: AMD Athelon 64 3200

RAM: 2 512 sticks of Crucial DDR PC3200

MoBo: Gigabyte (always had good luck with these guys as have my buddies) GAK8NS Pro

Video: ATI RADEON 9600XT

HD's: 2 80G SATA Western Digital (always had luck with these as well) (one for my stuff, one as a ghost in case of crash)

and that's about it... I've already placed the order so I don't quite recall every item model perfectly but the pictures and stuff are right on so I may be off by a model but I think these are the parts I ended up getting.... my old system went kaput un announced. I'm not buying all of these parts just the mobo CPU and one RAM stick, I've already got a good burner and CD-rom and I'm not really into burning DVD's so don't need to spend money on that either haha. I'm pumped :)

EDIT: oh.. and I had to get a new video card as well because my old one was making me upset. :) (HAD an Nvidia)

My opinion would be for a modest processor upgrade maybe a Athlon 2800+ or so. Definetly don't get a Celeron and I wouldn't get crazy with it yet because PCI-Express Motherboards are just around the corner (actually I think Intel may have one or 2 already) But once PCI-Express really gets out there which won't be long until it does AGP is gonna go bye bye.

Now obviously it won't dissapear for a while but for that reason I wouldn't go crazy on a full PC upgrade right now. My PC (Winders XP Box) is a Athlon 2600+ with 1 GB of Ram 80 Gb boot drive and a 250 Gb storage drive and a Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB video card. It does really well for gaming and other things I need it to do.

As far as upgrading just the motherboard and proccessor while keeping your regular hard drives with out reformatting I have had no problems doing just that in the past. My tower that I built in college started out as a 1 GHz Athlon with 512 MB of RAM then last year I upgraded it to the 2600+ and a new motherboard without reformatting. Now granted it was XP so I did have to call Microsoft to "reactivate".

So long as your IDE controllers aren't radically different you shouldn't have a problem - I never did until 2000/XP.