That said, the following high risk installations caused no problems at all

• Intel/Matel USB Microscope
• Nikon USB Memory Card Reader
• Dazzle FireWire card

• System Upgrade - Just some notes on upgrading your system - Motherboard, Memory, K6-2 processor
• Adding an HP CD-ROM Writer - Another horror story and tips on how to fix install problems
• Installing Windows 98 - The network card refused to work until a driver was downloaded
• Installing a Microsoft USB mouse - I had to manually copy a file before the driver would load
• Adding a second hard drive - Normally, this is a piece of cake ... but once in a while, there can be problems.
• Adding an AGP card - Catch this - changing from a PCI video card to an AGP video card caused the network to stop working.
• Adding a Cable Modem - I was "happy" with my dial-up 56K modem internet access, but some accesses were so slow that my family decided that we should try a cable modem.
• Adding ASP.Net - Microsoft is really pushing this dotNet stuff, so I thought I'ld try it.
• Updating Adobe Reader (formerly known as Acrobat Reader) - oh, it worked ok, it's just a continuing nuisance.
• ATI Remote Wonder - This is the ATI (X10) remote control device
• DSL - a high speed alternative to cable
• Thunderbird email reader - Not too bad ... once it is properly configured ... I do not like the defaults
• Sharp 3D monitor - This autostereoscopic monitor (means "glasses not required) displays left and right stereo pairs at the same time
• Canon Digital Rebel Camera Software - This allows you to control the camera from the computer and to take time lapsed sequences
• Some web cameras are pretty poor, for instance iMicro 1280x960 WebCam claims to provide lots of extra software, but it was not in the package. To make things worse, there were dead pixels near the middle of the image
• Adobe CS3 (Creative Suite 3) trashed my system ... just like a virus. This is what happened and how to protect your system. Part 2
• APC UPS Problem - A blinking green light and continuous tone means ... throw it away ... or plug in the cable and install the software ... your choice
• Vista is a disaster. Use at your own risk. Visual Basic 5 is not compatible ... I NEVER got it to work.

• Tom's Hardware Guide should be the first place you go for product comparisons. I suggest an October 5, 2001 article on Upgrading your system which includes very good benchmarks. Basically, more memory is best.

  All the Celeron processors are unattractive for an upgrade, since their second level cache of 128 kB is too small. *
  (uh, the Celeron 1300 has 256 K L2 cache).

  The Pentium 4's architecture is missing a powerful L2 cache.

• driverguide.com - If you need a device driver, try this.

URL: http:// cpcug.org / user / clemenzi / technical / Upgrades / index.html