> > 
> > i had problems in normal work to see a difference between pentium 200 and
> > celeron 500.
> 
> I updated from P233 to Athlon 900 and I _can_ _see_ _the_ _difference_! :-)

yes you can with SUCH change. you have about 5-6 times faster CPU, 2-3
times faster memory, better IDE interface. 
 
> Playing mp3's used to eat around 17% of CPU - now it takes less than 1%.
> Playing one song took 4 seconds of CPU. :-)  Encoding CD's used to take hours
> - now it takes only a moment.  No reason to use a network of 7 NetBSD machines
> for encoding any more. ;-)  Building software is much faster.  X is faster.
> GIMP is usable.

gimp unusable on P233?????

i'm using on P225 regularly to operate on large (sometimes
200MB) scannings. yes it IS slow on rotations and scaling. rest depends on
disk drive mostly. configure well memory size for gimp (in preferences) -
i have 32MB on 128MB machine so i have still 96 available for other apps
while gimp is working.
 
> I never thought it would make THIS big a difference.  I have upgraded yet
> another machine to Athlon 900 and have not regretted it.  These machines
> fly and the new IBM ATA disks do, too.  My "fast" SCSI disks like Barracudas
> feel like a piece of junk now.

you have upgraded not only CPU but motherboard, memory, disk. 
i was comparing 600 Mhz and 900 Mhz CPU's with the same other hardware!

> > overclocking is a nonsense.
> 
> I don't do overclocking.  I value reliability.
me too!