Will a DELL Dimension 2400 be able to hold Windows Vista or Windows 7?

A P4 can handle it, Win7 is less resource intensive than Vista and supposedly on par with XP. However, I’d suggest at least 1GB of RAM. If you don’t have it already, your computer probably uses DDR RAM, which is stupid expensive since it hasn’t been in mass production for years.

Win7 is much better optimised than Vista. Avoid Vista. Win7 will, however as @coogan says perform much better with 1GB, or better 2GB of RAM.

Have you considered an alternative operating system like Xubuntu? It will work very well on that system.

If you must replace OS, go with Win7. Make sure you have atleast 2GBs onboard memory. For additional on-the-fly memory, you can use a 2 or 4GB USB memory stick that has a ReadyBoost feature. Also make sure that you have a USB 2.0 port instead of the earlier version. You also probably have a HDD in the 40–60GB range that’s going to small and may croak soon, so its better to get it replaced.

Hmmm, considering the OS and hardware upgrade costs, it looks like a basement rated desktop is looking more favorable. .

Maybe its better just refreshing your Dimension, sell or donate it and get a new CPU.

Do you have the specs on the Dimension 2400? We could recommend better if we new the CPU speed, RAM & hard drive space available.

without actually checking the machine’s Service Tag no., here’s Dell’s general spec sheet for D2400 . Memory capacity is maxed at 2GBs.

I actually still support a few of this and earlier models for my clients, running WinXPP and Win2KPro. Just last week, I refreshed a couple of units, added 2nd HDD on them for files and using original Master HDD for OS and programs. They still run pretty peppy when refreshed.

Here’s a video of an install on a 1.3 GHz laptop. , 512 MB of ram and an Intel Celeron M CPU.
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/05/22/windows-7-how-low-can-it-go

Windows 7 will run better than Vista, which is a bloated piece of cr*p.