Find memory and stuff all you can afford (plus borrow from the kids piggy banks too) into any computer if your running windows or much graphical stuff on linux or *BSD.
MS-Windows 98SE (for a Micro$oft OS) still seems to be the most stable and flexible for lower processor speed with lower memory computers. We have tried the later versions on our 166MHz desktop and found it doesn't have the "horsepower" to push around all that extra code for the later versions of the MS-Windows 9xxx OS's. I have had occasional problems with Ver 1 drivers and W98SE. So we now keep ALL the USB stuff connected to our later model computers which have Ver 2 drivers. I have had major slowness problems with W2k with even Word 2000 application on anything less than a 650MHz with AT LEAST 512MB RAM - preferably 756MB RAM. Given the price of ATX mobos + ATX cases w/ power supply, cheap and good quality PC2100 to PC3200 memory, and the AMD XP-M 2500+ CPU <www.newegg.com @ $99), if your trying to do much of any serious office or graphical production work with Windows , I'd recommend spending the money and bypass the 200MHz to 1.6GHz CPUs and go for new stuff. Then I would keep the Windows 2000 and use it instead of W98SE = much more stable than the W9xxx series OS. You can even purchase complete computers for less than $300 by watching for the specials. I tend to loose my annoyance with a sellers biz practices when I have to open my wallet and spend my own money - sorry Bob G but Wal-MArt online has some real bargains. We look at anything that is a complete computer for less than $500 and it works daily for a year = you got a bargain. Do the math and divide that $500 of 24/7 operations by 365 days by 24 hours by sixty minutes == CHEAP computing! Often cheaper than fiddling with a SurvPC, unless the SurvPC stuff is your hobby and not something your trying to make money with. Sorta like out here in CA we all have lousy bus systems and any employee who is forced to use a bus in the rural parts of our county is not a reliable person - not their fault, just the way the public bus system works around here. IF a computer is a serious tool for you then spend $ and don't limp along with a problem child on your desk. my $.02 worth. John Oram howard schwartz wrote: > My proud history of survpc use starts with a trusty 486 for about 10 years, then > a beginning 100Mhz Pentuim for another 5, running doe and win95 ( no yelling > please). > > Well I went and made an impulse buy and got an IBM 660Mhz PC with a 13 Gig disk > , 128megs of ram, and windows 2000 `Professional' running on it, with an NTFS > file system. Apparently, just under the amount of ram and processor speed to > make a monster like win 2000 (or XP) run at decent speeds. > > Survpc PC types like me are not just fond of our old hardware, but of old > windows, dos, even unix software that we would rather keep than try to replace. > > In this regard which windows might offer the best combination of welcome new > features and backward compatibility? Many old programs, even windows 9x > programs, do not speak nicely to the NTFS file system, and also can not > talk to the `hardware abstraction layer' of the newer NT based windows, to > access hardware directly. There are weak dos emulations, some third party > tries at better ones (e.g., DOSBOX). > > Offhand I suspect win98 supports the most old hardware and software, whereas > the newer NT based windows offer more stability, security, faster devices like > USB ports, etc. > > What do we all think about this issue? > >
