First post, by keenmaster486
- Rank
- l33t
I have two Thinkpads that I am trying to figure out what to do with:
560X
Specs: Pentium MMX/233, 96 MB RAM, 128 GB compact flash
600E
Specs: Pentium III 500 MHz (yes, I upgraded it), 544 MB RAM, 64 GB SSD
I have been using them with Windows 98 - 98Lite with the shell swap on the 560X, to be precise. However, Win98 has some issues; namely, stability. It seems to slowly "gum up" over time as you use it, for one thing, which seems to be par for the course with the 9x family, but regardless, it just behaves slightly inconsistently over time which leads to a general feeling of instability even when it isn't crashing, which it also does from time to time.
I'm looking into NT-based OS's, then. Here's what I need the OS to be able to do:
- Word processing with a minimum of MS Office 97
- Some games but not necessarily very demanding ones since these laptops have crappy video chips with low memory; even the 600E only has 2.5 MB of video RAM with no 3D support.
- Run software that can play MPEG videos and stream them, VLC is a possibility in addition to Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic
- Basic web browsing with a maximum of RetroZilla
- Drivers for PCMCIA WiFi cards (could be any card)
- Be stable enough that I can run it for hours with no noticeable slowdowns, crashes, or sloppy memory management
- Be able to run development software such as Open Watcom or Visual Basic
- Be a snappy and fast OS overall on the particular machine, including having a low RAM footprint (50MB is about my benchmark as that's as low as I can get Win98SE to go at idle after a clean reboot. Less is better if possible, especially on the 560X as it only has 96MB)
The OS's I'm looking at are:
- NT 3.51 w/all SP's
- NT 4.0 w/all SP's
- 2000 SP4
- XP SP3
I have tried XP SP3 on the 600E already, and it works fine, but is not really snappy. Nothing particularly wrong with it; it just feels pretty slow to respond compared with Windows 98 and especially compared with Windows 95.
Any thoughts or advice?
World's foremost 486 enjoyer.