Can the "old clunker" handle XP Pro?

[Carbo]

Currently running W2K Pro on my home PC. All is well. But, being the tinkerer that I am, I'm beginning to get that itch to try the latest, greatest, bestest. Whether it is an OS, a car, or a woman, a change is all too appealing. For those of you in the know, what do you think I'll find the results to be if I switch to Windows XP Pro? My system is fairly middle of the road: a Pentium III 500MHz, with 384 MB RAM. My primary use on this machine is just emails, surfing the 'net, and some Word docs. Clearly not a stressful situation.
Your opinions, please.

 

[igowerf]

WinXP Pro should run fine on your system. I've found WinXP to be just as stable as Win2k and it comes with lots of helpful additions.

 

[aircooled]

You may need to turn off all of the shell "animations" and stuff, but otherwise, you should have no problems. My cousin's running it on a celeron 400 with no problems. If you can afford it, upgrade the RAM to 512.

 

[bsobel]

That machine is fine for XP. As was posted, if you don't have a relatively fast 2d video card you can turn off ALL of the new shell stuff (and UI then looks exactly like W2K). XP should do a fair job of auto-turning off some of the video niceties if it detects your machine/video card doesn't support everything it 'wants'.
Bill

 

[woodie1]

Agree with the others, you should be fine. In fact, you may not have to turn off any of the "extras."

 

[veryape]

Jebus, a Pentium 3 500MHz is not that old. I could see you worrying if you had a Pentium 100MHz and 32 mb EDO, know what I mean? You'll be fine, and you don't need to shut any of the cool features off unless you have a really crappy video card.

 

[PookyBoy]

I'm running WinXP on a system with Celeron466, MatroxG400 and 384mb ram. Even after turning off all the animations, I still find it to be less responsive than Win2000. Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Explorer also runs slower on my machine. And I find internet speed to be SLOWER with WinXP. But all of these maybe the result of my crappy processor. With your P3 500, it should be able to handle WinXP.

 

[NX2655]

You'll be fine with that setup; i'm running XP pro on an Athlon 600 128mb ram and a TNT2 M64 w/16mb and it runs everything fine, i know there is a nice program called TweakXP or something like that that allows you to turn certain stuff on and off to suit your prefences/speed needs.

 

[iluvdeal]

Come on that's not an old clunker, I was expecting you to say you had Pentium 166 and 32MB RAM. Your system is definitely more than enough to handle XP. For your needs it's probably overkill actually.

 

[Carbo]

Thanks for the replies, gents. Sounds as if I'll be fine according to those in the know. By the way, I'm on a cable modem if that matters. And my video card is a 3dfx VooDoo3 3000 AGP with 16MB.

 

[ProviaFan]

And I find internet speed to be SLOWER with WinXP.

You probably need to go into your network properties and uninstall that QoS stuff. Then there is a setting in the Computer Management that you need to change, but I can't remember where it is at the moment. If you search around the forums you should be able to find more information on this.

 

[iluvdeal]

<< And I find internet speed to be SLOWER with WinXP.

You probably need to go into your network properties and uninstall that QoS stuff. Then there is a setting in the Computer Management that you need to change, but I can't remember where it is at the moment. If you search around the forums you should be able to find more information on this. >>



Not possible on mine, the box is checked and greyed out so you can't unselect it.

 

[ProviaFan]

You were logged in as Administrator when you did that, right? Also, I think you need to uninstall it, not just unselect it. Don't worry, though, it's nothing you need.