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Best Windows OS for my 900mhz processor?

post #1 of 51
8/21/07 at 3:17am
Thread Starter 
It's really my kids game computer. And a little word processing. Any idea what system would run best on This Old Dell? It now has Windows 98 on it. Should I upgrade to Windows 98 SE and call it quits? I know that sometimes its best to stick to earlier (eg simpler) systems with slower computers. It think it has like 256 megs of RAM.
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post #2 of 51
8/21/07 at 3:50am
I have a 650Mhz PIII and 98SE runs just fine on it for 8 years now.
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post #3 of 51
8/21/07 at 3:53am
Get nLite and put XP on it if you like XP, it can be made really light. My version uses less than 14mb of RAM on boot. It'll take a bit of work to get it like you want it though.

Otherwise I'd suggest pretty much any Linux distro.
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post #4 of 51
8/21/07 at 3:55am
900Mhz with 256M RAM?
I wouldn't consider any serious upgrade for old computer like that.
I know it has its own use... like simple word processing, web browsing, routing machine or old games, but its little too slow for recent games or heavy applications. Get your kid better computer if that's possible.
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post #5 of 51
8/21/07 at 4:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaside View Post
900Mhz with 256M RAM?
I wouldn't consider any serious upgrade for old computer like that.
I know it has its own use... like simple word processing, web browsing, routing machine or old games, but its little too slow for recent games or heavy applications. Get your kid better computer if that's possible.
I think he meant internet games, like flash games. Anyways, I would switch to linux, but if you don't want to and want to stay with windows I would say just stick to 98.
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post #6 of 51
8/21/07 at 5:23am
Win98se
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post #7 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:16am
I've got Windows 2000 running on my T21 with 800mhz P3 and 128 megs of ram. Runs fine.
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post #8 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:19am
WinXP. Turn off the graphical animations in the display control panel, and it should run just fine.
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post #9 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Honken View Post
Get nLite and put XP on it if you like XP, it can be made really light. My version uses less than 14mb of RAM on boot. It'll take a bit of work to get it like you want it though.

Otherwise I'd suggest pretty much any Linux distro.
quoted for truth. wanderman xp is "teh oh snap"
www.nliteos.com
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post #10 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:31am
I wouldn't bother upgrading it from WIN 98 to WIN 98SE, unless you need USB support that you don't have currently. The only other practical upgrade worth considering would be WIN 2000, this would give you enhanced USP support and increased stability. This would be my upgrade recommendation, if any at all.

I don't think any increased functionality that you would gain from WIN XP, would be worth the increased drain on system resources.


- augustwest
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post #11 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:36am
wanderman xp or 2K
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post #12 of 51
8/21/07 at 11:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by augustwest View Post
I don't think any increased functionality that you would gain from WIN XP, would be worth the increased drain on system resources.


- augustwest

that, is why one uses nlite to strip many of the items in xp that cause it to hog resources. With nlite win xp can take less ram, less space, and run faster then 2000. You can even use nlite with 2000 so everything will be alot leaner.

edit: I have a p2 400mhz running xp like a champ lol.
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post #13 of 51
8/21/07 at 12:11pm
A streamlined version of Win2K will run like a rocket. Regardless of OS, keep it clean! Any extra junk or more than necessary start up programs will bring that box to a crawl. Don't bog it down with anti virus apps like norton, use online scanners which are free and do just as good a job.

~Zip
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post #14 of 51
8/21/07 at 12:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by skudmunky View Post
I've got Windows 2000 running on my T21 with 800mhz P3 and 128 megs of ram. Runs fine.
Win2000 is a good way to go. I've ran it very well on a desktop Pentium 3 600MHz with 256MB RAM for years.

The stripped down XP that others have mentioned sounds promising as well.

If you could run either of these two, I'd do it because they are much more robust and stable than Win9x.
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post #15 of 51
8/21/07 at 12:40pm
I also vote Win2k. I had it for years before upgrading to XP. I still don't see any real advantage with XP over Win2k, either then eye candy. And on an old computer, you'd just be met with slowdowns using XP. I'm just holding out for Vista to have some service packs so I can get 64bit memory optimizations, and improved multi-threading.
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