Trying to speed up my Dimension 2350

hi

I have a Dimension 2350 my wife bought for her office new from Dell eight years ago. We now use it in the family room as the family PC for my kids (5 & 9), the wife and I. We use it for the web simple office applications and simple games for the kids.

Man, this thing is Slooooooow.

I have an ASUS p4c800e system I built five years ago that's in my office and I will some day move to the family room when I can afford to build another $3,000 system but for today I'd like to revieve my 2350.

I run spybot, ad-aware and some others to get the spyware and at one point I think I caught a Trojan so I downloaded MacAfee free from Comcast and this thing started running Reeeeeeeally Slooooooow.

So I'm thinking at this point I'll format the drive and reinstall my operating system without any of Dell's added junk on it but first I thought it would be great to upgrade all the hardware to the highest the system will allow.

So this being my 4th Dell system I knew to go to the support site, type in my servive tag and Dell will tell me what's in my box and what I can upgrade to. This is where I'm stuck. I can't understand the results of the system information sheet they show.

What I'd like to know is; is the processor a Pentium or a Celleron and can I get a faster one? How much memory do I have and how many modules and will more make it faster? and anything else that might help.

I went to the recommended upgrade tab and it wants to sell me a stick of 512 memory, that's cool but does that mean I already have a 512 because they have to match right? And the funny thing is they want to sell me a Radeon X1300 256MB DDR2. I would love that, then it might even play Lego star wars for the kids but this card needs a PCI Express slot and I thought these Dell office machines didn't have a slot for a graphics card?

Can anyone recommend the upgrades I looking for? And is it worth it?

Thanks

Marc

Oh and here Are the specs that I got off the site:

System Summary

 

Service Tag: yomama     Change Service Tag

System Type: Dimension 2350

Ship Date: 4/6/2003

Dell IBU: Americas

 

 

 

Quantity Parts # Part Description

 

1 4X388 INSTR,PREP-MTL,DEV,DIM,INCRS,#

1 9U540 PRC,80532,2.0G,512K,400,SKN,C1

1 7N242 KYBD,104,US,SLTEK,LC,MG

1 6U220 KIT,MSE,PS2,S69,LOGI

1 X0956 PTR,CBL,USBD4B-10,LT,BLK

1 4N567 KIT,SPKR,120V,HK206,NMB,DAO

1 5W416 MDM,V.92,DFAX,INT,AL,DAO

1 9N645 CD,128K,I,F5,48X,LG,8481B,MG

1 8W234 DIS,FPL,15,D,E151FPB,MG,DAO

1 X0769 HD,30G,I,7.2K,60G/P,HIT-VAN2

1 4T139 KIT,SW,QIKN-NWUSR-ED-2K2,ENG

1 4Y427 KIT,SW,WP-PRDCT-STE10.0,V3,ENG

1 4W419 KIT,SW,BRTNCA2K3,ENG

1 6Y989 KIT,SW,TXCUTDLX,F5,ENG

1 8W383 KIT,SW,OVPK,WXPPSP1,CDWD,ENG

1 1X764 CDRW,680M,I,F5,48X,SMSNG,MG

1 1K696 DIMM,512,266M,64X64,8K,184

And Dell's recomended upgrade:

Parts & Upgrades

MEMORY 512 MB Module for Dell Dimension 2350 Desktop System edit

VIDEO CARD Radeon X1300 256MB DDR2

 

Thanks again

Marc