So, my no-name compact flash adapters arrived today. I ripped one open like a kid at Christmas, pulled a PC off the scrap heap, yanked my 128 MB compact flash card out of my PDA, and went to town.

This weekend was Mother's Day, which meant a family get-together, which inevitably led to some computer questions. A few months ago I found a PC for my mom that's for all intents and purposes identical to my main PC. Now that my sister and brother in law are due for a computer upgrade, I suggested they get the same model.

PC Magazine has a feature about inexpensive PC upgrades. There's some good advice there, but some questionable advice too. Since I really did write the book on free and inexpensive upgrades, I'll present my own advice (but I'll skip the pretty pictures).

SSDs are the first technology to excite me in a very long time. Next-generation drives with ultralow seek times and transfer rates around 100mb/s are finally available from Crucial and OCZ, but at a price of $600-$700 for a 32gb drive.

I'm going to wait for prices to come down and experiment with a cheaper alternative.

Mom's computer is fading fast. I built it in 2002 or so, but I used stuff from her old computer, including the operating system, which dated to more like 1998.

I'm tired of fixing it. There was a time that I might have enjoyed it, but she needs something reliable, and I don't have that kind of time anymore. Windows 98 was anything but rock solid when it was new, and this is a 10-year-old build. And do I know for certain that all the hardware is perfect?

It's cheaper and easier to just start over.

I found a blog entry today suggesting that you buy 3-year-old computer hardware and software.

I've been doing this for years, although I never put that much thought into it.

I picked up a spare Linksys WRT54G recently, and tonight I finally got a chance to try DD-WRT, a free replacement operating system, on it.

Amazing is an understatement. The biggest complaint I usually hear about wireless networking is range (and when people complain about reliability, they almost always mean range), and DD-WRT offers several solutions to this.

I upgraded a Compaq Evo D51S today. This was also sold under the name D510, and may have also been sold under the HP or Hewlett Packard brand. It was intended to be a low-profile, relatively affordable business computer.

Upgrading it poses some challenges, but there are some things you can do with it.

I was talking to a new coworker today and of course the topic of our first PCs came up. It was Cyrix-based. I didn't mention my first PC (it seems I'm about four years older--it was an Am486SX2/66).

With only a couple of exceptions, I've always bought non-Intel PCs. Most of the Intel PCs I have bought have been used. One boss once went so far as to call me anti-corporate.

I'm not so much anti-corporate as I am pro-competition.

I've been waiting with anticipation for flash-based SSDs to come out. If you're unfamiliar with these, they're hard drives with no moving parts, so their life expectancy is 10 years, and they're quiet, run cool, and they have virtually no seek time so for some tasks they're lightning fast.

The best drives on the market, from what limited information is available, seem to be the Samsungs.