[RU Joe]

^
Elrod you are too kind.
Sadly this PC is locked in its present state and is wholly un - expandable due to the fact Vista is my OS; this uses up 2 out of my total 3 GB of RAM simply to run.

Side note:
Did you know that Vista was Windows' attempt to copy certain functions of its Apple counterpart OS {of the day} , one of the main features is being able to 'flip' through your photos and other stored data like a book on screen?
Big deal, right? - that's what I said when I found this out - it sure is not worth sacrificing so much RAM just to have this useless feature.

I've thought of changing my OS but it approaches the cost of a new {or used} PC just to buy the Windows programs.

There are other possibilities which I am hesitant to attempt; one is swapping my hard drive with another one in a second PC I was given some time ago.
This other PC has a really bad video card which won't even keep up to you tube.
The good news is it's loaded with Windows 7 {I think} which uses far less RAM than my current one loaded with Vista.

My concern is not knowing if such a swap is even possible due to drivers and othersuch programs, and what if I go ahead and make the transplant attempt and end up screwing up the working PC in the process?

The other obvious solution would be to swap my video card into the Win 7 PC - again, I'm hesitant because past experience has shown that old PC's sometimes don't like their parts swapped and I have had them quit working while performing similar operations.

What I mean is, I've tried to change parts around between 2 {other, much older} PC's and, after finding the newly created combination doesn't work have tried to put things back the way they were only to find the original configuration stopped working like it did prior to my messing around with it.

Granted this was over 10 years ago with the 'white' computers loaded with OS's like Win 98 and Win XP that had the ancient drives and even {legacy} floppy drives in them, and I know things are much improved since then.

But if I'm being overly cautious and swapping the hard drive is a viable solution, something you guys do regularly without a hitch then please let me know and I can stop being so paranoid about the attempt.
Just to recap, this would be swapping a Win 7 drive into a PC which currently runs Vista.
{or the video card from the Vista one into the Win 7 one, whichever is less risky I guess}

It's late at night and this post is all over the place but I hope you understand what I meant.
I'm going to check the specs on both and will post them ASAP so we all know what there is to work with.