computer guts.

Well, after being off-line for 4 or 5 days I'm back. My antique only had 32 mg RAM so took it in for more, and while there asked to have a CD burner installed. After 3 days the tech was still wondering why the burner wouldn't burn. Turns out my system is too slow. It only has a speed of 166 (does this refer to the processor, or hard drive, or hard disc? all those terms confuse me).

Anyway, I'm taking it back around tuesday to get more speed (I think it will take it up to around 400 or so) and have to replace the Motherboard as well.

Question: Think I am sinking too much into this piece of death? So many "new" computers seem to come off the shelf with superfast speed and LOTS of RAM. Over the past yr I've had a new modem installed (56K), more RAM last wk (128), a CD burner (which still doesn't work untill I upgrade the speed) and have had it in the shop for other misc reasons that don't come to mind right now.

Someone suggested getting a "bare bones" and building on it so I could use some of the stuff in the tower. Was wondering just what comes with "bare bones". And if I'm gonna pull stuff out of this one and use it in that one, why not just buy the part that comes in the bare bones and stick it in here w/all the other stuff I already have? To get more speed do I just need a brand new Pentium processor or something? What's it take to get umpteen hundreds of speed? How can I get up to 7-900 RAM, like some of ya'll have? What wears me out is everything slows to a crawl if I want to run more than just one application (?) at a time. (Like letting my camera software load pics while I do email, etc...).

Any great ideas? Thanks.