best OS for a laptop?

[Teatowel]

I just got a second hand Toshiba Satellite 2540 CDS, K6-2 333 MHz, 32mb RAM, S3 Virge / MX Rev1 2mb graphics. It came with W98 (not SE I think).

It seems kinda sluggish. The only other laptop I have ever used is a Toshiba 133 Mhz with W95, and that was much faster. Would I get a performance increase by changing it to W98SE, W95 or W2000?

Cheers!

 

[FOBSIDE]

i would go with win98se. all the 9x/me ones arent as stable but they tend to be faster than 2000. i figure that shouldnt be too much of a problem since its a laptop and youll probably shut down often.

 

[Rogue]

If you don't use USB and don't care about advanced Power Management features, WinNT 4 is probably the best due to it's low system requirements and it's security.

 

[FOBSIDE]

its a laptop...youd probably want advance power management features.

 

[gtb55447work]

I think W2K is your best bet. Stable, and secure.

 

[Wizkid]

I agree that win2k is the best choice for a laptop, in fact I am using win2k on a laptop right now. However, with 32 MB's of ram it will be really slow

If you can get a copy of win95 OSR 2 or later, then I would try that. It should be nice and fast and I think it supports some of the APM features as well as having some USB support.

 

[owensdj]

Teatowel, Windows 2000 Professional is the best operating system for a laptop, but it will be too slow on a machine with only 32MB of memory. If you can get the memory up to at least 128MB, use Win2K, otherwise add 32MB and use Win98SE.

 

[jsm]

I recommend using DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1, OS/2 and/or Star Trek (the never released x86 port of the Mac OS).

All of the above operating systems should be just swell with your 32megs of memory.

 

[Hairways]

Jsm,

Have you ever tried to get a PCMCIA card working on a laptop running DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1?

I remember spending a few days trying to get a laptop running properly before Win95 came out. The hastle of playing with settings in the config.sys and autoexec.bat files is more trouble than its worth. Anyone remember memmaker and himem?

Teatowel,

For the spec of laptop you have got, I would install win98se. Its not too resource hungry, is fairly stable (compared to win95 or win3.1), has plug and pray - sorry - play capability and has power management built in.

W2k is very good (I run it on both my laptop and desktop PC) but it would run like a three legged dog on you PC unless you can substaintially increase the memory (to at least 128Mb). Also you don't mention the size of your hard disk. W2k can take up a lot of disk space.

NT4 again is good, but as Rogue mentioned above, it lacks plug and play, and only has limited power management features. If you can live with that then it is a very stable OS if you have all the service packs and patchs installed and is secure. Its also not too resource hungry but could probably do with about 64Mb to run really nicely.

As I said above I would do a clean install of Win98se (maybe after getting the latest bios from Toshiba), get the latest patchs from microsoft, get all the latest drivers for the graphics card etc.

After that I would just make sure it is set up properly e.g. turn on dma hard disk access, turn system sounds off, don't use wallpapers, make sure only the programs you really need are running in the system tray, so turn off task schedular, turn off the infrared tool. Also, don't use the microsoft office toolbar (just put the icons on the desktop) , take fast find out of the startup group menu.

Hope this helps.

 

[Teatowel]

Thanks people for all your help. I'm only going to be using the system for Office, internet access and for HTML and Java, so I assume that everything from W95 upwards will be stable enough, given that I don't intend to beat it like a dog? I also don't need the extra security that Nt might give, plus I'm not sure that the drivers Toshiba have for it will work with NT, but feel free to correct me.

I just need the thing to be as speedy as possible. W2000 seems to be out cos I definately cannot get any more than the 32mb of RAM that I already have. The HD is 4.3gb.

Another problem:

It does 800x600 in 24 bit colour, which I usually switch down to 16 bit cos it makes no difference for the basic desktop apps that I use. However, after working on it for a couple of hours, my head began to hurt, and then I realised that the refresh rate was set to 60hz, which is the only option (the graphics adapter default and optimal are the same).

I was wondering if there is anything I can do about this, as when I close down a window it's like it takes a while for it to fade away. Even writing with Word, there seems to be a delay before the characters make it to the screen. Again, I did not ave this problem with a 133mhz laptop running W95.

I got the latest video drivers that Toshiba have for the S3, but that didn't seem to make any difference. They are a year old, and I can't seem to find any S3 drivers on the web. Diamond, who seem to in charge of S3 (?) don't have any drivers for the adapter at all.

Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated!

 

[thornc]

Teatwel,

It depends in what you whant to do with the laptop and your knowledge.

With that amount of memory, I'd go with a Linux or a Win98SE installation....

Win98SE if you whant to do some kind of multimedia, games and stuff like that,
Linux if you what to word processing, programming and such....

I've got a bunch of laptops here on the lab, and all of them have dual OS installation with
Win98SE or Win95OSR2 and Linux RedHat.... one just has to choose what it whant's to do...but
mainly this laptops run Linux 80/90% of the time....

 

[jaywallen]

Teatowel: Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about the screen refresh and "ghosting" behavior. LCDs on notebooks can only be set to 60 Hz refresh, AFAIK. But that's not the real problem here, I think. the "CDS" in the model number indicates that this screen is dual scan. That's why you have the ghosting. Active matrix screens like the 15" 1400 x 1050 screen on my current notebook also run at 60 Hz refresh rate with no "strobing" issues in artificial lighting. I think you're probably suffering eye strain from the poor contrast and brightness of the dual scan screen. You should also consider the possibility that your working position with this system may be what's giving you the noggin ache. If you think about it, the screen on that laptop is MUCH lower and closer to you than a typical monitor on a desktop system would be. You may reduce the ergonomic strain by taking frequent breaks to move your head / neck around and relax your eyes by focusing on things other than the screen for a few moments at a time.

The consensus seems to be for Win95 or 98. I think you'll find either one will be likely to work reasonably well for you as long as you're reasonably careful about what you load onto the system. Remember that apps which depend on fast-moving graphics or lots of repeated hard disk accessing are going to be dogs on a system like this, because of the slow screen response and because laptops have SLOW hard drives. Even the ones like my Inspiron 7500 which are advertised as being "desktop replacements". (Yeah. Sure.)

Hope you have a good time with the system. I have owned several Toshiba notebooks and have felt that they were the best-designed notebooks in terms of ergonomics and industrial design issues.

Regards,
Jim