The computer had a nasty hardware failure, and so, I got a new motherboard (a Nforce2 based thingy from LeadTek), a new processor (AMD Athlox XP 2600+), 512 megs of DDR RAM (running at 333 Mhz) and a Seagate Barracuda hard disk (40 GiGs). Quite a powerful setup (compared to my older box - and I plan to increase the RAM to 1 GiG soon). Performance (especial the decrease the compile time) is quite impressive and I am quite happy.
..anyway, I am still settling down with the new machine (install/compile/install/uninstall/yuck/yuck) , and will make a better posting next time.