I have an old machine that I would like to use for a friend who only wants it for Word, Excel and checking mails. I wanted to put Win98SE or WinME, but can't get them anymore I could get Windows XP Home and would like to know if you would advise installing it on the following system. Pentium III 450Mhz 64MB Ram 6G Space 48x CD-Rom Drive 2MB Video card
The RAM may be a problem. Here are the system requirements: Pentium 233 MHz or faster processor 128 MB RAM 1.5 GB hard disk space CD-ROM or DVD drive Sound card Keyboard and mouse DVD video playback requires DVD drive and DVD decoder card or DVD decoder software and 8 MB video RAM Video capture feature requires appropriate digital or analog video capture device and 400 MHz or faster processor for digital video camera capture 33.6K modem and Internet access required for online and conferencing features
I think though the 6GB should be plenty if they are only running Word and Excel. The RAM is a definate though
Well I found a Windows 95 in a old box of mine. It only needs a 486 with 33Mhz and 8Mb ram. I'm going to install that till I can get extra 64MB or 128MB extra for a friendly price. Thanx everyone
In theory you "can" run XP on that box, however the Ram is seriously going to be a limiting factor. If you can find some old memory laying around that would be prime... Even $20 worth of memory would be a huge improvement.
I got my hands on some free upgrades and now the system is. Pentium III 500Mhz 128MB Ram 1x 6GB 1x 4.3 GB 48x CD-Rom Drive 2MB Video card I am going to see how this is going to run.
XP seems to like 256 for itself. Then you can use the rest of the memory for other programs. I can't imagine running it with 128 especially on an old machine, but then again, it probably still be better than running 98!
I have run XP on a 450 with 200mb of Ram.. it wasnt pretty.. but as an E-mail terminal it worked well. 128 is definately "light" but might be doable... It will just be swapping a lot.
I'm posting from a Pentium II 400 with 128 RAM and running XP Professional. No problem at all .. If you just need Excel and Words, IMHO you'd be fine. For your info i can run Firefox, DW and Fireworks all at the same time .. (although sometimes it's p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow). However, I'm thinking of wiping XP and change to Linux so it could fly instead of crawl.
this will hurt running XP on your system, you will have to disable all the unwanted services for better performance. Check this thread: Windows XP Services Guide