So I purchased this desktop knowing that it was going to be a bit older and not the fastest device on the planet, but on paper it's specs are substantially higher than my laptop, which works well enough and doesn't typically crash, so I went for it. When I got it, the computer is seriously underpowered. It tends to crash and struggle when watching anything on youtube in 240p. In actual practice, this device tends to crash when trying to perform operations that my laptop with lower specs can do without difficulty.Part of the issue is that there are two very different devices being sold under this heading. One is the pc with the Intel i3 cpu and the other is the pc with the Intel i5 cpu. I purchased the one with the i3 cpu.As it currently is, the pc isn't strong enough for basic tasks. I've purchased an i5 cpu, a cheap graphics card, and 16 gb of ram to install. We'll see if those $100 worth of additional parts turn it into a decent machine, but don't expect this pc to be adequate out of the box, particularly the i3 version.Update:I've finished the modifications. I'm new at modifying pc's, so my upgrades were fairly simple, but they easily turned it into a functioning machine.The first upgrade that made a huge difference was the upgrade to an i5 CPU, which made a huge difference in speed and capability.The second modification was the addition of a $50, 2 GB GPU. This modification was fairly tricky for me since I couldn't get the screen to turn on once I'd plugged in the GPU. All the solutions I found online focused on modifying the settings once the screen was turned on. I wound up removing the GPU, removing the CMOS battery to force a reset which made the screen work again, booting the pc into safe mode and removing the default Intel graphics driver and installing the new driver, then installing the GPU, which now functions well.Lastly, I replaced the two sticks of 4 GB RAM with two sticks of 8 GB RAM. This was a good thing because the PC frequently pulls over 50% of new RAM capacity, which is more than it came installed with.All that being said, I run some moderately graphics-intensive processes, though not a intense a gaming, and my current GPU struggles to keep up. The GPU is now my new bottleneck and I'm looking to upgrade that again. Either way though, any GPU you add will probably speed this machine up, and since lower-end low-profile graphics cards aren't too expensive I would recommend adding one.The Bottom line: get one with an i5, not the i3. The i3 CPU is so weak as to be effectively obsolete. I would recommend also getting a GPU and a upgrading the RAM to 16 GB as the i5 needs more room than the 8 GB that comes installed can give it.