I just bought an IBM Thinkpad 600E. (366MHz, 64MB, 6.4GB.)

I am trying to decide which Windows OS I should put on it. I am deciding
between 98 and 2000 and might consider NT or XP also. Does anyone care to
comment on the Pros and Cons of each of these OS on my machine?

Here are a few things that I have already heard.

I've been told that XP and 2000 will run very slow on my machine. True?

I've been told that 98 is junk and will lock up ten times as much as the
others, but it is less RAM and processor intensive. True?

I've been told that 2000 and XP are basically continuations of the NT
platform, whereas 98 is basically a continuation of the DOS platform. If
somebody could confirm or correct this, I'd really appreciate it.

I've read that NT does not support the cardbus standard for the PCMCIA cards
so data throughput from an ethernet card will be much slower. True?

-Jonathan Klein

Great comments, thanks.

I actually have a copy of 98SE that I got from a friend. But I was
second-guessing wheather or not I should install it.

I am using NT on my desktop machine. I installed it about 4 years ago
because I thought it would be more stable. It was pretty stable for the
first couple of years, but as applications, the internet in particular,
became more processor intensive it has become more and more unstable. I
think it has to do more with the antiquity of my desktop (a 486 @ 133 MHz)
then NT though.

However, I don't want to install NT on my Thinkpad. Mainly because I had
read on the IBM site that NT doesn't support cardbus. This is a big deal for
me because I spend a lot of time on the internet so I want maximum data
throughput. I even went out and bought a 3Com PCMCIA Ethernet card also (not
the latest model though, way too expensive, the next to latest). From what I
had heard these are one of the best brands you can get.

If I understand you correctly you are saying.

XP is the best OS out there but requires a powerful machine so will probably
not be suitable for my machine as it is right now.

2000 you don't have experience with, but I take it you think XP is a notch
above it as far a stability goes.

ME is garbage.

98SE is solid even though it is built off of DOS and should be a good match
for the power of my machine.

NT - You didn't comment much about it. What are you thoughts about this one?

-Jonathan

"Skip" <reply@this.newsgroup> wrote in message
news:vBe1b.219447$o%2.101648@sccrnsc02...

Jonathan Klein wrote:
<snip>
Some might differ with the opinion that XP is best.

Both are now equally stable, but neither would be happy/satisfied with your
64 megs of RAM.

ME was an afterthought. It isn't much different than W98SE and an
experienced user might track down the memory leaks and tweek it a little bit
to be perfectly suitable. Its biggest problem was its built-in edition of
adaptec go-back self-recovery software. Turning that off solved a lot of
problems for a lot of users. (there are a small handful of other issues, but
nothing that can't be solved by visiting websites like www.annoyances.org
and others and doing some reading)

I would agree with that, but you still might consider ME because it will be
supported and M$oft will issue updates for a little bit longer period of
time. The calander has already exceeded the origional date Microsoft
announced they would quit issuing updates for W98 so it is anyone's guesse
when updates will stop being posted for that OS. Official support has
already ended. ME should have an extra year or so of patches and support
from Windows Update in the scheme of things, I would guesse. That in and of
itself is a good reason to consider ME even if it does take a little
tweeking to get ME running really well.

I'll add mine. NT is/was a really good platform to begin services from. I
happen to be quite partial to it for running Oracle servers from, but it
isn't exactly a feature-rich computing environment and it wasn't Microsoft's
A-#1 premier operating system long enough to get solid compatability with
software vendors and hardware makers (driver support is still to this day
somewhat lacking).

Lastly, have you ever wanted to try Linux? There are some nice light
distros of linux that would run quite well on your hardware. In fact, even
some of the newer versions of bigger distros (like Red Hat and Mandrake) are
becoming very user-friendly these days, have laptop-install options, and
will run nicely on a 366 with 64 megs. If you want both stability and
features, try a nice distro like Red Hat 7.3. Red Hat is up to 9.0 now, but
8.0 and 9.0 are starting to become memory hogs. 7.2 and 7.3 are both still
easily found for download on the net and both can be found in Linux
instruction books at any bookstore. I have a desktop in my collection with
a K62-400, 32 megs of RAM, and a 6 gig ATA-33 Fujitsu HDD that runs really
well with RedHat 7.2 installed.

"Jonathan Klein" <jfklein@shaw.ca> schreef in bericht
news:Fyd1b.828079$Vi5.18328496@news1.calgary.shaw. ca...
All the systems at our office are running 2000. These include systems with
less performance then yours. For most office applications the performance is
fine. Startup is slow, but if you can avoid to reboot often that should not
really be a problem. The 64 MB you have is an absolute minimum. Add as much
memory as is affordable. It will be the largest performance bottleneck, also
when you use 98.

I'd say if you can run 2000, XP might run even better. According to
Microsoft (they should know ;-) ) it's perfomance has been optimized
further. I am now used to XP, and I think it is great. It is MUCH better
then 2000. There might be 'power users' who are dissapointed by it (to say
the least), but I think that is mainly due to that it is more difficult to
tweak, and due to general dislike of M$. However, when I upgraded from 2000
to XP, I also upgraded from P3-350 192Mb to P4-2.53 512 Mb, so it is
difficult to compare performance of XP and 2000 for me. Start-up is indeed
much faster in XP, harddrives of both systems are comparable in speed.

Greetz,

Derob

"Jonathan Klein" <jfklein@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:Fyd1b.828079$Vi5.18328496@news1.calgary.shaw. ca...
Your decision on what OS to install is also dependent on what kind of
hardware upgrades you are willing to do on your system.

Your current specs are fine for Windows 98. Win98SE is not junk, but
does suffer from more stability problems than Win2K and WinXP. Windows
NT doesn't support very many drivers for laptop systems, but I am not
sure about the lack of support for cardbus standards. One big concern
would be its lack of support for APM/ACPI. This means that power
management of your laptop would be lacking so there isn't a way to
maximize battery life once you are away from AC power.

If you upgraded the RAM to 128 MB or better yet 256 MB your system would
handle Win2K quite well. Your processor is too slow for Win XP to run
efficiently - it requires a PIII 500 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM for
reasonable performance - in addition your HD is too small for XP, but is
fine for Win2K.

I would recommend that you upgrade your RAM to 256 MB and then upgrade
to Win2K - best by using the clean install method. And yes, Win 98 is
still a continuation of a DOS OS, while Win2k and WinXP are further
developed NT systems. One other thing is to visit the IBM website and
read about your system. They have good support there - including the
most recent BIOS updates and various drivers as needed for the various
OS compatible for your system.

HTH.

You (and the followup posts) pretty much have outlined my thoughts.

I'm inexperienced in Windows 2000 (but I know a *lot* of people who use and
swear by it).

I disagree that Win Me can be made stable -- I've tried and it just doesn't
work. Also, the "rollback" feature is not related to GoBack (GoBack tracks
stuff at the sector level -- the built-in rollback tracks file changes), but
I agree that it isn't very good in Win Me (it is much better but not perfect
in Win XP).

NT is very stable and a good choice. I don't recommend it for a laptop
because it doesn't Plug-N-Play very well (or at all) which makes PC Cards
hard to use.

All in all, a good discussion, and some good advice both above and elsewhere
in this message chain.

racing work". But you are right. XP is very good for some things, but
clearly is unacceptable for others (trivial example -- DOS games don't work
under XP because there is no "DOS" underneath it). I do believe that XP
(and its close relative Win 2000) are more stable than the predecessors. Of
the DOS (aka "win 9x") operating systems, Win 98SE seems to be by far the
most stable choice (but less than the NT-derived ones, which also include
Win 2000 and Win XP).

my Omnibook 4150 and have had very good results. The install is just a few
days old, so I am certainly neither an expert nor yet qualified to comment
on my experience. But so far it is going very well and I've got wireless
working perfectly.

- Skip


"i'm_tired" <it_isnt_valid@emailaddy.edu> wrote in message
news:P4j1b.171423$Oz4.45448@rwcrnsc54...

"Norm" <rxpharm59@hotmail.com> wrote in news:bi5m4u$abl1
@news.emirates.net.ae:

I would disagree on that I have XP Pro running very well on a PII 350MHz CPU.
I do agree on the RAM. It takes a little longer to start up but the system
performance is better than when it had W2K installed.

--Shaun

"Skip" <reply@this.newsgroup> wrote in
news:Gmt1b.226663$Ho3.29308@sccrnsc03:

WinME can be made more stable but it requires a lot of reg hacks tweaking and
additional utilities to make it work the right way. Win98SE was the best
release of Win9X series but it's still prone to crashing. W2K is really a
good choice but he will need more than 64MB of RAM, 128MB will work fine but
256MB is so much better. NT4 I wouldn't consider for many reasons (driver
issues, no PNP, etc.) Windows XP? I would say I doubt it will be a real
problem it boots a little slower but will run fine on his CPU but he needs
256MB of RAM and at least 20 GB of HDD space to really make it work right.
512 MB or RAM is preferred and was previously stated it depends on how
willing he is or can actually afford to upgrade that computer to for the
various versions of Windows. I will state though if he goes with XP he should
go with the PRO version.

--Shaun

As Skip noted, this has been a great discussion. Thanks for sharing your
opinions.

I am going to go with Windows 2000. I am expecting that it will be a bit
sluggish with 64MB of Ram. But I am willing to put more in it if it is a
real problem.

98SE might actually run faster on my machine with only 64MB. But with more
Ram I think 2000 will be the better system. Plus I feel I am taking a step
backward going from using NT the last 5 years to the DOS based 98SE.

My first hurdle was convincing my friend, an IT technician, that I knew what
I was doing. He lives and dies for DOS and is certain that 98SE is the
better choice.

Does anyone know what a 128MB stick of RAM for a 600E would cost me?

-Jonathan

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 19:21:41 GMT, Shaun Marolf
<shaun_marolf(NOSPAM)@hotmail.com> wrote:

Win ME has been pretty stable for me for 2 years without any registry
hacks or additional utilities.

64 meg is fine for 98 or ME but will be pathetic for 2K or XP.


Jonathan Klein wrote: