Which OS is best suited for a slow laptop?

[gogeeta13]

I have Windows 95 OSR2 on it right now, but it doesnt support my NIC, so I have to choose from Win98SE or WindowsNT SP6 to go onto it. I dont think Win2k is an option for this laptop, it is:

P133, 40MB ram, 1.4GB hdd, 10x cdrom, 10/100 PCMCIA NIC, floppy..



My one concern is NTs support of laptop's, specifically the PCMCIA bus...

Ideas?

Thanks

 

[Czar]

Win98SE along with software like Rain that idles your cpu when its not in use

 

[Biggs]

Win98 SE + 98Lite

 

[Athlon4all]

Hmmm, I would stick away from any OS that has IE 4.x/5.x/6.x with the Windows Desktop Update, my first PC, a Compaq P75 with 40Megs of RAM really was significantly slower in 98 than it was in 95. I would stick with 95 OSR2 and install IE 5.5 (without the windows desktop update), and it'll still be a decent speed.

EDIT: Just noticed that 95 OSR2 doesnt support the NIC, in that case, I would lean on trying NT4, and seeing if it is compatible. Although it by itself is gonna need more horse power than 95 due to the NT code base. I would try NT4 first and then 98SE and see which you like.

EDIT2: Biggs makes a good suggestion on 98Lite. I do remember doing it and it did work in removing IE from Windows, but I never really did any testing to see whether it was really faster, or on stability, etc. That might be worth a try as well

 

[gogeeta13]

Ok, as soon as i get the rest of these files off of here(i am spanning like 20 megs of crap accross a bunch of floppies via winRAR...AHHHH!!!) i will then try NT4sp6. If they doesnt work out, then 98 plus some sort of shell thing like 98Lite it is. Worst case, Linux it is.

 

[crypticlogin]

NT supports PCMCIA fine or at least in my case, a TI chipset. What it doesn't natively handle is most of the power management features that's built into a notebook, e.g. display suspend (there are 3rd party programs to handle this), soft power off, and maybe suspend to disk, aka hibernate in win2k. Which network card are you looking to use?

 

[gogeeta13]

Xircom RE-100 10/100 ...32bit, non cardbus. Double height, no dongle..