Well, if you’d like, I’ll trade ya for it. 
I’ve got a Blueberry iBook sitting here that I’m, quite frankly, at a loss what to do with. I’d like to have another working computer around, but I’m not feelin’ the love with the Mac, y’know?
(I should note that I think the Compaq is probably more powerful/modern than the Blueberry, but I know crap-all about Macs, so maybe not. PM me if interested.)
You might consider installing some flavor of *nix on it. Burn a Ubuntu CD to try it out without wiping everything on the laptop, for example. That would help avoid a lot of the Windows-only stuff, and if you’re not using it for WIndows-only games, everything you need for schoolwork is freely available.
I like the iBook, but it is indeed older than this Presario, and also I want to have Windows, so I can’t trade.
Crucial.com is saying I need PC-2700 RAM if I chose the right Presario model, but the installed RAM card seems to be PC-2100. Does Windows have something like the Mac System Profiler, that will let me know what’s there and what the bus speed is and all? I’d also like to find out if it has Bluetooth and so on. Crucial’s site has a system profiler, but it’s blocked by my security software or something.
There doesn’t seem to be too much software on it. I see MS Office, the antivirus stuff, some games, a driver for the wireless, and that seems to be it. It has Windows Defender which is something nobody has mentioned here.
It seems to be doing some sort of update and then rebooting every time I use it.
I do believe Fresh Diagnose will tell you the speed of your existing RAM. And give you lots more system specs.
Windows Defender is pretty good as an anti-spyware app, I hear…but I found it to be way too “bloaty” and processor-intensive for me. But that was shortly after it came out so maybe it’s better now.
If it’s doing a lot of updates (Windows Defender and Office updates are usually part of the Windows Automatic Updates scheme, as well as the standard OS updates) it could be that the previous owner ignored updates for a while…sometimes you need one update before you can get another one.
Or, it could be that you’re not automatically downloading and installing - just downloading. It’s reminding you to install every time you reboot.
Or it could be that you’re not letting the download or install finish before you reboot.
Or it could be that there’s a problem with Windows Update on that machine and…well then you’ll need some help. Ask in GQ if you think this is a problem (not blowing you off…just hoping you’ll get better info there).