What to do with the old systems? oh dear, dont get me started...
My main pc is a reasonably respectable AMD64 3000 pc with linux and win xp dual boot, and a half decent ATi x700 256mb graphix card, so I should be happy with that, right? well, I have kept pretty much all my old pc's and most are still being used. Wanna know what they are doing?
music storage pc- AMD 850 oc'ed to 950 athlon with 512mb SDRAM, Ti200 128mb graphix and 6 hard drives adding up to something like 200 odd gig of hd space, most of which full of music. Linked to my same monitor (22" iiyama pro) as the main pc using a KVM switch.
win 95 and dos toy- P1 233 with 128mb ram, 13 gb hd, and 16mb TNT pci graphix running win 95- and it goes online sometimes too! use this to run old software and old games that wont run on anything else- oldversion.com is damn good for this!
girls pc #1 933 P3 on a slocket converter, 512mb sdram, 60 gb hard drive space, dvd and cdrw, windows 98, ATi Rage Fury Maxx 64mb graphix, wireless network card. Eldest girl (18) uses this for internet and doinf coursework. she does some photo editing as well.
girls pc#2 AMD 900 athlon, 512mb DDR ram, MX440 graphix, 20 and 30gb hard drives, CDRW and DVD drives, wioreless LAN,running win xp. used as an internet portal for the second girl (12) for msn messenger stuff- you know what its like! and for watching movies, playing games and listening to GLC.
Boys spare pc AMD 1900 athlon, 512mb DDR ram, ATi 9500 graphix (that is or was one of my best purchases ever, that card), 60 gb hard drive CD and CDRW/DVD combi drive, running windows 2k. this is the 15 year old boys second pc for his mates to use when they come round for LAN games. its connected to the net via cable when required.
the boy also has a shuttle pc I built from scratch thats a bit of a low end games machine, handles world of warcraft, thats all he is interested in, lol, and theres another pc for my missus- another shuttle- this one also scratch built rather than from my leftovers and is or was a mid spec sempron thing.
Thats what you do with your old pc's, hand them down to family to stop said family using yours all the time! heh heh heh.