Athlon 700-> WinXP or Win98?

[JEDI]

I have enuf spare parts to build a new machine. I have no idea what I'm going to use the machine for.

it's an athlon 700mhz, 256megs ram, matrox g400 16megs video and a 60meg hd.

It'll have Office2000.

I'm thinking since it's a slow machine to go for Win98. On the other hand, I have alot of hd space so WinXp???

Should I use WinXP, or Win98?

 

[MrChad]

Should be plenty for Windows XP.

 

[Philippine Mango]

If you have no need for the "crap" that XP has and you see no advantage to XP then go with 98. I see a lot of people upgrade to XP because "its the latest version" but if there is no need for XP then don't go with it.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
If you have no need for the "crap" that XP has and you see no advantage to XP then go with 98. I see a lot of people upgrade to XP because "its the latest version" but if there is no need for XP then don't go with it.

The stability improvements alone make XP worth it over 98.

 

[Nothinman]

I would install NT 4 before Win98.

 

[Malak]

Might run shoddy but XP is far more stable than 98.

 

[Philippine Mango]

98 is stable if all the hardware is stable/you have good drivers. The athlon system would be perfect for 98se since that was about the time it came out.

 

[Malak]

The OS isn't stable because of stable hardware or drivers. It's software that kills it. XP handles crashes much better than 98. Where 98 might blue screen, XP simply shuts the application down without any harm to the OS.

 

[Marine]

I think that you are over looking a terrific OS without all the XP baggage. I recommend highly that with the specs you are using that Windows 2000 will be a perfect fit for you. It has a relatively small footprint and all the functionality of 98 and XP without the superfluous frills. Try it, you may like it... and it plays games much better than non-2K users have any idea. Best luck

 

[Link19]

I would definitely go with Windows XP as long as you strip out all the bloated junk it comes with first. You can make a custom XP CD with certain services and features removed with a program called nlite. And Windows 98SE is a POS as any Microsoft OS not based on Windows NT is a POS when it comes to 32-bit computing and multi-tasking. Windows 2000 would proabbly be the best choice for an Athlon 700MHz system though.

 

[BML]

I run XP on a 667 and 256 mb of ram. This machine runs like a dream, never crashs. I computer is like a car if you take care of it, it will run forever. 98 is a good os and so is 2000 and xp, but that only depends on how you run it. You can run windows 95 like a champ if you know what your doing. I run photoshop cs and the pretty much everything macromedia makes and have had no problems. Plus i didnt take any of the junk out that these guys are talking about. Go with xp.

 

[timswim78]

If you don't know what you will be doing with the computer, why not experiment a little? You could dual boot 98 and XP and see which one you like better. You could try Solaris, now that it is free at Sun.com. You could try one of the easy to use and free linux installations like Mandrake, Fedora, etc. You could also try Linux designed for older machines like VectorLinux or DS Linux.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Just go with 98 and be done with it.

 

[snapdadc]

I used to run XP on a 300mhz AMD K6-2 with 384mb of RAM and it ran pretty damn well. You system should run XP without a hitch.

 

[Budman]

Windows 2000 would run nicely on that rig.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I had enuf spare parts for a PIII 840 and I installed Win XP and it runs great, although I do have 512 Mb of Ram.

Marc

 

[CTho9305]

Many people here don't appreciate how well modern OSes run on old hardware. I ran XP for a couple years on an Athlon 700, with 128MB for the first year. I switched from 98se, and trust me - XP is orders of magnitude better. It's just so much more reliable, and regardless of what people with crapware-laden 3GHz PCs say, it's not slow. I think people say you should use an older OS because they want to feel their 3GHz CPU overclocked to 3.1GHz really is that much faster for day-to-day stuff .

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: Link19
I would definitely go with Windows XP as long as you strip out all the bloated junk it comes with first. You can make a custom XP CD with certain services and features removed with a program called nlite. And Windows 98SE is a POS as any Microsoft OS not based on Windows NT is a POS when it comes to 32-bit computing and multi-tasking. Windows 2000 would proabbly be the best choice for an Athlon 700MHz system though.

what are the bloated featrues of XP? what does nlite strip?

 

[Randabis]

nLite strips whatever you want it to strip.

 

[Link19]

Originally posted by: JEDI

Originally posted by: Link19
I would definitely go with Windows XP as long as you strip out all the bloated junk it comes with first. You can make a custom XP CD with certain services and features removed with a program called nlite. And Windows 98SE is a POS as any Microsoft OS not based on Windows NT is a POS when it comes to 32-bit computing and multi-tasking. Windows 2000 would proabbly be the best choice for an Athlon 700MHz system though.

what are the bloated featrues of XP? what does nlite strip?

The bloated features are System Restore, Shell Services which include the luna theme, Fast User Switching, and Shell Hardware detection. Also error reporting is crap that should be removed. There's many more things that can be removed as well.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: Budman
Windows 2000 would run nicely on that rig.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Link19

Originally posted by: JEDI

Originally posted by: Link19
I would definitely go with Windows XP as long as you strip out all the bloated junk it comes with first. You can make a custom XP CD with certain services and features removed with a program called nlite. And Windows 98SE is a POS as any Microsoft OS not based on Windows NT is a POS when it comes to 32-bit computing and multi-tasking. Windows 2000 would proabbly be the best choice for an Athlon 700MHz system though.

what are the bloated featrues of XP? what does nlite strip?

The bloated features are System Restore, Shell Services which include the luna theme, Fast User Switching, and Shell Hardware detection. Also error reporting is crap that should be removed. There's many more things that can be removed as well.

There's no need to "strip" those features from XP. Frankly, I think you'll be fine with a standard XP install. If the interface feels a bit sluggish, you might want to revert to the "Classic" theme. Other than that, your system is more than adequate to run XP well.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
If you have no need for the "crap" that XP has and you see no advantage to XP then go with 98. I see a lot of people upgrade to XP because "its the latest version" but if there is no need for XP then don't go with it.

The stability improvements alone make XP worth it over 98.

I agree, WinXP is a lifesaver in comparison with Win98. And you can easily peel down on how much resources it uses up.

 

[KoolDrew]

I would run Windows 2000. Basically XP withput all the junk and it would run perfect.

 

[ktwebb]

XP will run fine on that machine however I'd suggest going to 512MB of memory. If you don't do that then I'd suggest turning off all the visual features. There is other stuff you can do to tweak your XP system, some of them suggested in this thread already. If you have a copy of 2K then that would be fine but if your having to purchase a licensed copy of a MS OS, then there is no reason not to go with XP.