I’m sure you’re all on pins and needles waiting to hear what the outcome was. We decided to do the conversion surgery to turn the i3 into an S3 and use it with an external computer. The benefits of adding more RAM and a barely newer i5 processor just didn’t seem worth it to me.
I’ve written it up at this post for anyone who wants to know more. I3 (before 2013) with Vista 3 - #27 by tvwonder