What browser for a athlon xp 2000+/128mb ram computer?

[gmaster456]

I would take Virtual Larry up on his offer if I were you. That's a good deal, especially considering what she is coming from.

 

[xgsound]

If it's just for email, I'd suggest Thunderbird. You get the added benefit of not needing net access to view old mail.

That's a damn effective idea! If you have XP working on 128MB I don't think it will accept much and still operate at a speed you can stand. I'm using Thunderbird 3.1.16 if the newer (ver 9?) one is too slow. After that a small linux (?puppy) is about the only option left with the advantage that an A/V will be less necessary.

I do the relatives machines and appreciate your position.

Just so you know how cheap things are these days, here is a desktop with W7, 4GB for $299. It's actually laptop guts in a desktop. http://www.staples.com/HP-Pavilion-p...product_432730

Jim

 

[Pretty Cool]

I used Puppy before on a low-powered system. That thing is annoyingly hard to use, and it still does not solve the problem of having too little RAM to display pages reasonably quickly on a modern browser.

Are you sure the maximum memory is 256mb? Manuals are not always accurate in that they are sometimes written before the larger memory capacities were released & tested. So maybe, the system can utilize a little more. Sounds like it probably uses PC133 which you should be able to get used fairly cheaply. In my opinion, you would need at least 512mb total ram to make the upgrade worth the effort.

Obviously, you want to spend as little as possible because I have picked up discards that were more powerful than what she has.

 

[Harvey]

She's not poor as such. She basically has no reason to upgrade. Shes happy with her PC so why upgrade. She backs up her office files on two thumb drives so shes good with that. Infact shes does backup twice a day

If the motherboard only supports a max of 256 MB of RAM, it's probably running SD-RAM or possibly an even older form factor. The reason to upgrade is that, without more RAM, this system will always be on life support, and no amount of money can upgrade it enough to run well on many, if not most, contemporary websites that now require newer browsers.

 

[bobertomarley]

Cant get more than 256MB on the mobo. The mobo brand is some Kobian

How do you know this? It doesn't sound right. IE- I have an OEM compaq with an athlon t-bird 900, and it was upgraded to 1gb RAM. (2 x 256, 1 x 512)

The athlon XP's use 266 or greater fsb speeds (vs the 200mhz one in my t0bird), ALL the athlon XP mobo's should accept over 1gb.

THe only way to be sure, would be to take off the case, get the mobo model #, and look up the specs from the manufacturer; I would bet dollars to donuts there are no athlon XP 266fsb mobo's that top out at 512mb. That ceiling would sound more plausible if it was a slot A board.

 

[Binky]

Every hour you spend working on this computer has more value than the entire computer. It's not worth saving.

Try lxskllr's suggestion of a dedicated email client, or try using the mobile page for gmail at http://m.gmail.com

 

[corkyg]

BTW, is Thunderbird a browser? I thought it was a email program. It is by Mozilla and their browser is Firefox. Consider using the browser that comes with the OS she's using. Keep life simple.

 

[imported_brandon]

BTW, is Thunderbird a browser? I thought it was a email program. It is by Mozilla and their browser is Firefox. Consider using the browser that comes with the OS she's using. Keep life simple.

It does have the Gecko rendering engine built in, so if you want to scrape the barrel, you could say it has a browser.

There's also a handy little extensions that lets you browse the web within Thunderbird: http://thunderbrowse.com/

 

[lxskllr]

BTW, is Thunderbird a browser? I thought it was a email program. It is by Mozilla and their browser is Firefox. Consider using the browser that comes with the OS she's using. Keep life simple.

The goal isn't a browser per se, it's to read email, and use a calendar. The browser that came with XP was IE6, and that should be banned from the web.

 

[corkyg]

The goal isn't a browser per se, it's to read email, and use a calendar. The browser that came with XP was IE6, and that should be banned from the web.

That done be true!

 

[worst_person]

The best browser for lower end systems that I've found is Dillo. It supports Unix-like systems but also has a fork, D+ Browser, that supports windows as well. Similar to Links2, Dillo has requires very few resources and does a decent job at rendering pages with text and pictures, but also supports some more modern features like tabbed browsing. It does not support javascript and can't be used to view videos and such, but it works great for email and browsing.

 

[Iron Woode]

This, except that, if the motherboard uses DDR or DDR2 RAM, you may be able to bump it up to 4 GB. Windows XP (32 bit version) can "see" a maximum of a little over 3 GB, but if the motherboard uses onboard video, it will use the added RAM above 3 GB for the video, rather than taking it from the RAM available for running programs.

When you check the specs for the motherboard, you can probably ignore specs that state a lower limit on the amount of RAM the system can use. Many such specs were written when sticks of the RAM type with larger capacity were not available. I can't guarantee this, but it has worked for me on several machines.

If the motherboard uses SD RAM, this RAM form is very expensive because it's not the current volume seller so, unless you can find some at a reasonable price, it may cost more to add enough RAM than it.

In any case, bumping the RAM up to at least 1 GB (2 GB preferred) will vastly improve the performance of the system, and the only question is whether you can get it at a reasonable price.

well, the specs given indicate a socket A set up.

given that info there are only 2 ram choices available: SDR and DDR. Which one is used here is unknown. He could run cpuz and check to see which board it is.

Budget boards tended to use SIS chipsets. Those usually were SDR and maxed out around 512mg. I have 2 of them.

Higher end boards used Nforce 2 chipsets. This was DDR ram and maxed out at 1.5 gig or 3gig. 3 slots 512mg each or 1gig each depending on various factors. I have 3 of these.

Mid range boards used VIA chipsets and they were also DDR. Boards with 3 slots could hold 3 gigs. I have 4 of these.