Win ME or 98

[academicfailure]

Iv got a IBM thinkpad with a 700mhz celeron and 180megs ram, what should i run it on, Win 98 SE or ME?

Thanks

[nihil]

OK mate!..................interesting one, I would personally go for Win98se,

I have it running on a PI/133 with about 180 Mb of RAM and it is just fine. I also have it on an IBM PC300/533 with 512Mb of RAM............no problems.

I run WinME on several boxes, this one for example..........PII/266 with 128 Mb RAM..........not that stable......not enough RAM

ME needs 384 to 512 to work properly and stably............I built the wife a machine with an AMD Duron 1.3 and 512Mb of PC133.................works just fine, never crashed in three years or more.

I am thinking of retiring this one and replacing it with the P4/1.7Ghz and 764Mb of RAMBUS.......then the problems will happen faster



512 is the maximum stable memory for 9x.............IMHO

Go for 98se, I personally think that it is the best of the home user OSes from M$.

Cheers

[whatthe]

ME was supposed to be an upgrade of 98 but it sucked so bad even Microsoft moved on quickly. If I had a choice between the two it would easily be 98.

[SDK]

98Se ALL the way!! That my tips!

[Relyt]

Between Win98SE and Me, absolutely 98se! I along with others, have experienced a lot of problems with ME and although I have the CD still, I could lose it and not be upset. I dual and triple boot my machines and 98se is in all of them. Additionally, on my old laptop I still have the original install of Win98se, over 5 years of adding and removing countless programs. Hasn't let me down yet. Don't forget to get the patches while 98se is still supported.

cheers

[darkes]

I've only ever had one encounter with WinME, and that would put me off for life!

A friend had asked me over because she was worried about the security of her PC when connected to the net.
Quite right too, as she didn't have anything at all in place.

Her PC crashed 5 times when I was just applying the standard MS updates ...

On the other hand Win98SE isn't bad, although not as stable as WinNT or WinXP in my experience. But given your hardware configuration, Win98SE looks like the best bet to me.

[nihil]

On the other hand Win98SE isn't bad, although not as stable as WinNT or WinXP in my experience. But given your hardware configuration, Win98SE looks like the best bet to me.

I agree with darkes on NT, other than that it would have to be NT5 (Win2K). This is a "thinkpad" which I believe is a laptop? NT4 doesn't have power management and does not support USB, which makes it a little limited?

So I will slightly revise my opinion, and say that Win98SE would be my choice if security is not an issue, and especially if you like playing older games or using DOS based applications. Otherwise Win2K?

Unfortunately, I do not consider XP to be an option, given the hardware. I have seen people try to run it on underspecified machines, and it is as bad as WinME


/slightly off topic

If you have a PIII of 933Mhz or better and at least 384Mb of RAM then XP would be my choice, as you could expect a performance hike of around 20-25% over WinME, just from the OS change.

/pure heresy

If I had a box like that I would probably stick LinSpire (Lindows) on it..........or maybe one of the industrial strength Linux distros?

That was the closest I could find to "burning at the stake"

Cheers

[hiddeninclouds]

I recall when my circle of friends had gotten a hold of Windows ME early, installed it, uninstalled it, and we've never spoken of it again

Win 98SE is a better choice

[academicfailure]

Thanks for the help, looks like its 98se then, wheni got it in late 2001 it had ME on it so i kept it and didnt listen to anyone telling me to upgrade to xp, becuase because it was my first computer.

[Info Tech Geek]

Originally posted here by nihil
If I had a box like that I would probably stick LinSpire (Lindows) on it..........or maybe one of the industrial strength Linux distros?

I would say Linspire, Win2K, or another Linux Distro such as Debain or Gentoo.