My dad asked this morning about adding
memory to his computer. At first I
thought he was asking about RAM, because
he asked how much I paid for my new
"memory" when I bought it recently. After a few
questions, I figured out that what he really
meant was more hard drive space. It seems
he bought the latest version of Quicken a
couple weeks ago to do this years' taxes on,
and when he tried to install it he didn't have
enough space. He thinks he can make
enough space by deleting his old tax
software, TurboTax, but I wonder. I haven't
looked at the machine or at the system
requirements for Quicken yet.

Anyway, I told him that he'll need to purchase a
new hard drive if he wants to increase his
storage space. I was just guessing at what
the price ranges might be, but I figured that
since I think I've seen 20 and 40 gigabyte hard
drives at Sam's Club in the $30-60 dollar
range, he might be able to get an older 10
gigabyte drive, which would more than suit his
needs, for $20. What I don't know is if they're
still even selling those in stores, or if I am
even close to guessing the price correctly.

Of course he'll also need to make certain that
whatever he buys is compatible with his
system. It's an old Pentium 133-megahertz
with 32 MB RAM, if I remember correctly. I think
the current hard drive is only 1 gigabyte, and
obviously it's close to being full. They're
running Windows 95 on it. I'm not sure if they
have a space for an extra hard drive in it or not;
they might have to take out the old one to
make room for the new.

Got any pointers I can pass on to my dad?

Gri"feel free to ask for additional information; I
cannot guarantee I will have the answers,
however"shny