I got an old Dell Inspiron 4000 for free, and overall its in very good shape.
It boots and runs, the lid doesn't flop around, and the purple case accents actually look decent on it.
it has a 600mhz P3 celeron processor

and only 64mb ram.
Not too sure of the differences between sticks, so I looked what Dell recommends first
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0762523
and matched it with a stick from tigerdirect
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1717416&CatId=552
the obvious question is is US Modular a decent make? did I match it right (other than one is a 256mb and the other a 128mb), and it seems silly to ask, but can I use a 133mhz stick instead of a 100mhz, as that would give me more options

secondly, the hdd is going out. sounds awful and takes forever to retrieve data
something I'd like to try is to get a CF card, say http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178171
and an adapter like http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp
I've seen a few other topics and I know that flash cards have a limited number of writes, but how fast will you hit that limit using it as a hdd?
They've got flash-based hard drives available now starting at, what, ~$250
have they gotten to the point where it'll take years to fail?
I haven't been able to get much information from google about this, though I haven't searched for too long

A note about its uses, I plan to run Fedora 7 with Fluxbox or XFCE and use the laptop as a secondary to take places I wouldnt like to take my thinkpad, on trips and such.
Really, with 40gig seagate drives with 5 year warranties the same price as a 4 gig cf card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148089 flash isn't a practical option, but I'm curious

7/16/2007 12:19:04 AM

eh, you should be good for several years as long as you boost the ram and make sure you keep the drive from paging (which shouldnt be much of an issue with a minimal linux setup).

7/16/2007 12:55:26 AM

the laptop can support up to 512mb of memory (256x2) it also supports 133mhz, so you should be good to go, and i'd go with the seagate

[Edited on July 16, 2007 at 12:58 AM. Reason : .]

7/16/2007 12:58:14 AM

i was going to say something about using SD cards instead of CF (as they're smaller and almost always cheaper per GB), but they only make a desktop version

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/adidesd.asp

7/16/2007 4:19:16 AM