I want to use broadband internet on my pc,unfortunately,my pc is not compatable for broadband. I have a very old pc with a genuine intel pentium processor and a processor speed of 166 mhz. The minimum requirements to receive broadband are a Pentium 11 processor with a 233 processor speed.
Is there any thing I can do to install on my pcor do I have to buy an up-to- date one.
I AM AN EXTREMELY INEXPERIENCED PC USER,so any help given in simple terms would be grateful
Many thanks.

Hi there, it's so refreshing to hear from someone that's still running an old system like that with numbers in the hundreds rather than thousands! I can relate to these more easily than all the new ones that are just a mass of big numbers whenever anyone talks about them!

In answer to your question, there's every chance that it would actually work. However, the ISP (the company that you're getting broadband from) have tested older PCs and decided that PCs that are slower than 233MHz are just too slow to be reliable. They are more prone to error messages or even crashes because they can't do things quickly enough. Also, your experience of the broadband service provided by the ISP won't be as good as it should be because your PC won't run it as fast as it potentially could on a newer PC. The bottom line is that, whilst it will probably work, your ISP is stipulating this requirement because they don't want you ringing their helpline to complain about problems or your disappointment in the speed if those issues can be traced back to the fact that your PC is too old. Which is fair enough really.

So, what can you do? Well, not a great deal but there may be a couple of options to upgrade your system depending on some other information about the system that you haven't supplied. The things that I'd need to know to evaluate whether your PC is ready for the scrap heap or whether there's a couple more years of life in it are:

1. What version of Windows are you using? If you click the Start Menu, it tells you down the left-hand side.

2. Do you actually have a USB port in the back of your PC that you can plug the broadband modem into?

3. What's the fastest processor that your motherboard (the main printed circuit board inside your system) can support? I'd need to know the make and model of the motherboard to be able to find out for you.

4. How much memory do you have installed and how much can the system take?

WHAT?!! All those "techy" questions? DON'T PANIC ! We can normally get the answers to all these questions (and more!) using a special tool that we've created on this web site Using the PC that you're talking about, please click the 'Online Hardware Scan' link at the bottom of my message. This will run a check on your system and will give you the option to copy a summary report back into a reply to this message. The report will be very technical but I'll understand it and I'll explain what it means for you

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