Please help this newbie

[ricky]

I have a few questions (please excuse my ignorance if they sound too basic):

1) I have an old Pentium 2, 333 with 4.3GB HD and 64 MB RAM with an old Traxdata CD-burner (CDRW). IDE interface. Any ideas how I can utilise about $400 - $500 to upgrade this as buying a new PC would be outside this price range?

2) Any good DVD-roms that someone can suggest or perhaps tell me where I can find review info. on this.

3) What are the minimum system requirements for converting home movies from both digital handicam tapes and VHS tapes to VCD/SVCD etc. I assume my present PC would fall over, right?

4) Apart from playing/reading DVDs, is there any purpose a DVD-Rom serves. I need this info. before I decide on whether to buy a DVD-rom or stick with my CD-Rom and CD-burner.

Thanks in advance.

Ricky

[AND1]

If you are looking to spend around $400-500 to upgrade a Pentium 2 with a 4 Gig Hard Drive and 64 Mb you can easily buy one of those gateway computers (300SE):

- Pentium 4 Processor 1.8GHz
- 128MB DDR SDRAM
- 40GB
- 40x/12x/48x CDRW

and so...

You can easily upgrage from this basic pacakge later on. This system runs for $599

[BJ_M]

if i were to upgrade this -- i would get as much memory as possable and of course a larger hard drive or two ...

converting a hour of DV to vcd would take you about 12 - 18 hours per hour of raw footage i would guess ..

i dont know were you are but in the usa you can get a something lik a p3 1ghz celron w/ 256 mem and all-in-one mother board and a 40 gig hard drive for 400$ or so ..
i would put the 400-500$ to work that way first .