P3 @ 550 & 327ram

[Canndy]

Hey all, just joined.

my cpu, pentium 3, 550, 327=ram, winXP pro

should I keep runnin xp or should I return to win98, there is no problem caused by xp. would you suggest some antivirus/firewall software? plus, i store my cpu in a storage area in the desk, is it alright? sorry, my english is rough. hope you understand.

 

[Andres3605]

if you dont notice any performance hit, Xp is the way to go, as fot teh AV, i use Noton internet security, you can check the software forum for nice and free aplications too, mine was a gift ..

 

[dguy6789]

Norton is the best antivirus, I have never tried their firewalls. I do know that zonealarm is a great firewall though.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I thought you were saying that your P3 550MHz is at 327MHz from some reason when I first looked at your thread title.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

I was running a PIII-550 with XP for a couple of years until I built my new system. You might want to stick with an older version (2003) of Norton, or try Avast! Personal Edition which is free. As for firewalls, I personally like Zonealarm, though I've used Sygate in the past with no problems.

 

[Canndy]

I have used Norton 2002 for about 2 years and 2003 for less than a year, no problem but they ate up my resources. Just today I cleaned up evertyhing, removed win98, and installed a fresh copy of xp pro on the freshly formatted drives. I am now using Sygate for firewall and AVG for anti-virus. I hear people saying that Avast! is a good software but it doesn't detect like other softwares do. Thanks for y'alls opinions!

 

[bobsmith1492]

Heck my friend runs XP fine on his PII 300 (which I easily OCd to 333, hehehe).......

EDIT:

Doh, sorry, actually he's got 98; nevermind.

 

[wisdomtooth]

For light use (websurfing, word processing, etc.), XP works perfectly fine on P2- and P3-generation CPUs as long as you got lots of memory.

My P3-600E (not overclocked, 512MB RAM) works fine as an FTP server with WinXP... My brother-in-law's Celeron 300A overclocked to 450mHz works fine for general light use, and will even give non-stuttering DVD playback.

 

[modedepe]

As long as the performance isn't bad with XP, I would keep it since I find it much more stable than Win98. For firewall I have used Zonealarm for the past few years and would recommend it. I'm using Norton for antivirus which I like more than any other antivirus I've tried, but some of the free ones aren't bad.

 

[Dough1397]

my p3 550 katmai works fien under windows xp i have 384mb pc100 sdram.... but sadly alot of xvid and divx movies struggle, i dont knwo why, probably inefficiencies in winxp