What's a good resource-friendly OS?

[MikeyPutsOut]

I've asked around, and I guess its Win2KPro...any objections?

I need a Windows OS that is easy on the memory because I'm formatting a POS PC and Laptop.

thanks in advance, guys

 

[Sunner]

How much memory do you have?

 

[MikeyPutsOut]

96 in the PC, unknown in the laptop.

 

[Sunner]

I'd forget about Win2K or XP frankly, I find them rather slow, albeit somewhat acceptable if you're not too picky, using 128 MB, 96 would definitely be too little IMO.

 

[Mellman]

yup...agreed....whats the CPU speed? i've installed XP on a 600 celery with 128mb ram, even with all XP's "special visualizations" turned off it is still dog slow...

 

[Unforgiven]

your best bet if you wanna stick with a windows os is to use windows 98. your system is gonna crawl with 2k or xp.

 

[Chaotic42]

I've found that if you're dealing with anything under 1GHz and/or 256MB of memory, 98SE is your best bet.

Just my personal observations.

 

[Steve]

I have a laptop running Win2k on 96MB and a P133. Yes, dog slow, but stable at least. My PC with 256MB and a 450 runs it rather well. I'd say upgrade the RAM in that machine and go for Win2k.

 

[MikeyPutsOut]

I have a pentium II 333 in the PC. I don't remember what the laptop has...all I know about the laptop is that it is a Celeron (also 4 years old or so).

I don't really want to put money into these machines because they are such crap. I mainly want to use them for word processing and internet use (research mainly). The laptop runs dirt slow with XP right now, and the PC is pretty dang slow too. So, any objections to Win98SE then? Maybe I should go back to Windows 3.xx

 

[Diz2K2]

I would go Win98SE. All the lowend systems I still have around has 98se installed. It will run decent for what your needs are.

 

[mrweirdo]

Why does it have to be windows? You can browse the web, word processing, etc in linux
Imo laptop might be a bit tricky to get working though under linux if it has any propietary windows hardware based stuff.

 

[MikeyPutsOut]

I was thinking about using Lindows, but I'm not very familiar with it and am concerned about compatibility concerns with some progs that i MAY install later on.

 

[DesolationWilliams]

windoze 98se

 

[BurnItDwn]

win2k would run pretty slow on 96MB, but it would work pretty good
with less than 128MB of ram .. 98 is probably your best bet
if the PC has 128mb or more, than Definatly win2k

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: MikeyPutsOut
I was thinking about using Lindows, but I'm not very familiar with it and am concerned about compatibility concerns with some progs that i MAY install later on.

Definitely don't bother with that.
Even if it were to work with all your programs, Linux's power lies in it's flexibility, for example Debian with X and a lightweight windows manager would work on that box.
However, it's not some magical solution to everything, and a heavy distro such as Lindows would probably be even slower than Win2K/XP.

 

[drag]

If you want to run Linux on it, I agree, aviod Lindows.

Actually aviod lindows, period. Fedora is better in almost everyway. But that's just my opinion. Actually neither of them may work at all if they are compiled for 686 and above proccessors.

If you want to try Linux out on these slow computers and want to have a usable desktop check out vector Linux

It's based off of Slackware linux and is specificly optimized for slower computers. It uses light-weight software when ever possible and sacrifices on eye candy.

However even then it will run reasonably fast, but coming from Windows it probably will be dissapointing in the functionality department.

On slow computers you end up using the command line more then anything, and for that those computers are plenty fast. However for a person not familar with the software beforehand your probably be better off with Windows 98 on it.

But if you realy want to give it a try it won't hurt anything, it's free.

(or debian with a lightweight Window manager)