Minor Upgrade

Possibly but the amount of money you are gonna spend will be determined by the length of time between buying the machine and upgrading it

 

Either you still haven't mentioned what applications you need to be able to run at a decent speed or I just missed it. Without that information any advice you get won't be particularly useful. You have a DVD burner so I think we can safely say that's one application you need to consider, and since you say it needs to get you through school that means at least a word processor. And of course you've said that it's not for games so that makes it easy to rule out a video card.

DVD backup time will improve (if you're compressing) with more memory and a faster CPU. Actually, since you only have 256MB right now, I'd say another 256 would be a good idea in general. For word processing it doesn't really matter that much since the computer spends most of it's time waiting for you to press keys, and all computers wait at the same speed. To be any more helpful than that I'd have to know more about the programs you use or expect to use.

 

LOL Dunno why everyone is so crazy over Xeons lol... Xeons arent that special ... they are special when in super giant clusters of 500 or more..... which is essentially their role (mass CPU clustering and light server duty on 2-4 CPUs). Now unless you want to be messing around with that stuff I'd stay away from Xeons

For $3600CAD (rough currency conversion), you can get a hell of a system -- but certainly not to last you more than one year -- no doubt it will be competitve/good at the end of that year but certainly not "up there". Id prolly reccommend a FX53 & ASUS A8VDLX and couple that with 1GB of Corsair XMS and a low-midrange videocard and you should be set. ... hell even that is insane overkill for what you are intending to do with it.