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Windows Operating Systems Software Hardware

Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware 688

Posted by timothy from the probably-on-some-8-year-olds'-hardware-too dept.
Daniel Iversen writes "Still 95% compatible with Windows XP, The Windows 2000 OS still runs very well on very old hardware - hardware with low specs it was never even meant to run on (tech setup guide - not a review). The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?"
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Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware More

Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware

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  • The Answer Is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:21PM (#13096036) Journal
    The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?"

    No! I mean, Yes! Wait....No!

    • It depends...

      Users doing the occassional word-processing, checking email, and web surfing will be perfectly happy with an 8 year old PC.

      Users who wish to use their PCs for CPU-intensive tasks like video editing, or just playing the latest games will NOT be content with an 8 year old PC. My 3 year old PC was more than adequate for coding, but hopeless for editing HD video.
      • It depends...

        Are you a consultant?

      • Re:The Answer Is... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:39PM (#13096287)
        Users doing the occassional word-processing, checking email, and web surfing will be perfectly happy with an 8 year old PC.

        Actually, you know what's funny? I keep a win98 box around for a ham radio program I want to use occasionally, and for casual browsing in the shed: it's connected to the net, and it's almost never impacted by viruses and winnukes anymore. I have a feeling that, now that win95/98/ME aren't the most common Windows revisions anymore, virus and worm writers focus their attention on more modern Windows and as a result, my silly old Windows box is left alone now :-)

        • Re:The Answer Is... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Pharmboy ( 216950 )
          I do the same with windows 95. I have an emu aps sound studio hardware/software that doesn't run right on Win98+. No virus/trojan issues, although it isn't on the net full time and I keep AV/Firewall updated.

          If new MS versions were as tight and compact, and EASY to modify as 95 was, I wouldn't have so many Linux boses around. Assuming they updated to address more ram, ntfs, etc.

          Personally, I think an even more stripped down version of 95 would be a perfect 'internet appliance' because it was easy for n

        • Re:The Answer Is... (Score:3, Informative)

          by tverbeek ( 457094 )
          A lot Win9X's security comes from the fact that it was never packaged by MS as a server, so it doesn't have stuff like IIS installed by default and begging to be exploited.
      • Users doing the occassional word-processing, checking email, and web surfing will be perfectly happy with an 8 year old PC.

        People like that would be far better off loading Fedora 4, or Umbutu or.....
        They would have the same functionality, but with no worries about the BSA coming in with a search warrent and battering ram. More importantly, they wouldn't have to worry about 40,000 viruses making the system useless before they even started working on it.

        The would also have a modern, supported operating system, and software to do things like word processing without the need to spend more than the current value of the machine on even more buggy software.

        I actually did that last week. Got a machine that was being 'dumped' at the computer store on the corner, loaded FC4 onto it and delivered it to a native elder who doesn't have the money to buy a new machine for himself.
        I even gave him an old inkjet printer and enough ink to last him a few years of refills. Now he can surf, write memoires, use email and not have to worry about being 'owned' -- and once he gets cheap broadband, I can even do remote support for him.

        • Unless you're giving the elder cli access and thats it, do you honestly think and 8 year old PC would run KDE okay? Especially the latest versions found in FC4?

          That just seems silly. Now throwly RH 9 on there instead would make more sense, or even RH 7 if you're talking 8 years ago. They are starting to merge together for me so I don't remember which versions came out when.

          At any rate, I don't see how any of this is really news. Win2k was fast for me even back when it was new, I beta tested it on a 486 10

          • Re:The Answer Is... Linux (Score:3, Informative)

            by Arker ( 91948 )

            First off why would you assume you need KDE? Run oh say ICEWM and stick the web browser, email, and office apps on the menu and it's good to go.

            And second, yes, I've got hardware that old, and it runs KDE fairly well, with the animations and extraneous fluff turned off.

    • The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?"

      The anwser is, why should I care about my old PIII550 impeding PC sales. Anything that drives down the prices of computers is a good thing.

      The truth is a PIII with Windows 2000 will do everything just fine, or at least anything I have ever needed to do.

      • Word 2000 for documents... lightining fast. Check!
      • Excel 2000 for spreadsheets... no prob

  • So what? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:22PM (#13096047)
    The two points learned from this article:

    1) A previous version of Windows, with less bloat, runs better on hardware with less resources to accomodate the bloat of future versions.

    2) If you turn off practically everything, it'll use up a whole lot less memory.

    Well, anyone with even a shred of common sense regarding computers should already be aware of those facts...so what purpose does the article serve, other than the rather mediocre instructional value?

    • Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by m50d ( 797211 )
      The point is that Win2K, unlike perhaps 98 or definitely 3.1, is compatible with almost all applications and things, so the bloat in XP is not merely unnecessary but serves no purpose whatsoever. It seems to have just been added on to sell new computers. <flamebait>Kinda like the whole Java language</flamebait>.
      • that's really interesting point you make. a lot of my friends work in financial services, and their laptops all run win2k professional. I thought it odd when somebody would boot up and i'd see the win 2k screen as opposed to xp professional. but different friends, different companies, different hardware vendors, all running win2k.

      • Oh yeah. I recently bought a new laptop. It of course came with windows XP. After getting frusterated for a week with all the lame "wizards" for everything (discussion of how confusing XP wizards are saved for another thread), I decided to load windows 2000 on it. Within an hour or two I was able to find W2K drivers for all the hardware on the laptop and start loading. I was slightly surprised to find that some of the W2K drivers actually worked better and had more options then the XP version (was true

      • Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jilles ( 20976 )
        You can actually disable the bloat in xp. I installed windows xp on a 1997 pentium II 233mhz with 64 MB once. Both cpu and memory were way below the official required spec. And of course the out of the box experience with everything on was nothing to write home about but it worked. If you strip it you are left with an improved version of windows 2000. The kernel is a mere minor version increment over windows 2000. The rest is just services which, mostly, you probably want turned on if your machine has enoug

    • so what purpose does the article serve, other than the rather mediocre instructional value?

      It's a safety valve to ensure that the Slashdot signal-to-noise ratio [wikipedia.org] remains constant.

      Eric
      Find out why I'm mad about click fraud [makeeasymo...google.com]
  • The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?

    Yep. My dad and many other *average* pc shoppers don't know that W2K can run on 8 year old hardware.
  • I would argue that if anything this if anything helps pc sales. Why? because if you don't like xp for what ever reason and have to go with a windows enviorment, you can always fall back on windows 2k.

  • I am not obsolete..... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Daedala ( 819156 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13096065)
    Planned obsolescence is not a virtue. Why is not buying new hardware a bad thing? That's what the question implies.
    • Why is not buying new hardware a bad thing?

      Because big companies don't like it... how are they gonna keep under-funding pension plans, raising health insurance premiums 25% annually and stealing 401K money if we don't buy their latest and greatest crap?

  • Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)

    by utopicillusion ( 843168 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13096069)
    Well, Linux runs well on older hardware too. Infact, the older...the better!

    Btw, Linux also runs on toasters, coffee machines, ipod's etc.

    • Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gzip Christ ( 683175 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:45PM (#13096351) Homepage
      Btw, Linux also runs on toasters, coffee machines, ipod's etc.
      Bah! Linux will never be more than a niche player in the toaster market because it is offers too many choices and is therefore too confusing for the drooling masses. Do you think Joe Six Pack cares whether his toast is toasted in a light, medium, or high manner? No! These dizzying array of options will only serve to turn him off to Linux. What he wants is the friendly, animated Toasty(TM) avatar that knows how toast is to be made.

      • Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)

        by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @03:09PM (#13096679)
        Do you think Joe Six Pack cares whether his toast is toasted in a light, medium, or high manner?

        You're not even close to the options available - Linux-enabled toasters allow you to toast to 32-bit resolution of doneness, and with the right loadable kernel module, also allow you to toast grayscale images from all supported image formats (BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PostScript, etc) directly on your toast. (They're waiting for the toaster manufacturers to support inkjet heads with edible color ink before allowing color image files).

        Planned further enhancements include autoadjustment for type of toast being used (requiring an internal heat-resistant CCD camera to examine the pattern of the toast surface), but right now you have to specify one of the 64 predefined keywords indicating toast pattern in the toaster's /etc/toasttype.conf file.

        Oh wait, you were talking about Joe Sixpack. Well, just show him the feature which autoselects a random image from his extensive porn collection - I'm sure he'll see the benefits of open-source then.

        P.S. I'm not kidding about the toaster display device [theregister.co.uk], although I doubt it's running Linux :-)

  • Well then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) * on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13096071) Journal
    Well then, forget this silly AMD64 system with this waste of 1M L2 Cache! I'm digging out my Pentium 133 system out of the basement!

    Just because someone can drag themselves through a decathalon with a broken leg doesn't mean they're going to be fast, effective or ejoy doing so. I don't see Pentium scaling back their development teams because Win2k was a smooth OS that brought life to the unwieldly Win95-capable hardware.

  • Sure. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tyroney ( 645227 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13096076) Homepage
    I'd think it impedes sales just about as much as making hardware that keeps working longer than six months.

  • Legacy Support (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mad-Mage1 ( 235582 )
    The Compatibility w/ older HW/SW is a good thing from a marketing standpoint, but all of the older drivers and antiquated forms of data access to/from these legacy devices does put restrictions on what the OS can do TODAY. In short, the need to support such a wide, disparate spectrum of devices and technologies hampers the OS to be as fast and efficient as it COULD be, if support for these older devices and formats were removed.

  • I just use my turbo button! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Static-MT ( 727400 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:25PM (#13096083)
    Whenever I need a little extra juice for a new fangled Win2k app I just hit my turbo button. I should get a few more good years out of this old PC...
    • Whenever I need a little extra juice for a new fangled Win2k app I just hit my turbo button. I should get a few more good years out of this old PC...

      Bleh... If you want a truly speedy computer, all you have to do is rice it up [riceboypage.com]. S00per f4st racing stripes and stickers make all the difference dude!

    • Re:I just use my turbo button! (Score:5, Funny)

      by FauxPasIII ( 75900 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:53PM (#13096463)
      You can't hold Turbo down, it's for short boosts!
  • No, but it does impede XP sales.

    At work we just bought a rather sizable chunk of Win2K licenses so that we could upgrade older systems from Win98 without taking the performance hit that we were expecting from XP. Plus since I'm more familiar with Win2K than XP, managing the network is easier for me without having to re-learn where they hid all the settings AGAIN.

  • Mod me "obvious" but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xanthines-R-yummy ( 635710 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:25PM (#13096088) Homepage Journal
    I don't think today's typical applications would run too well on 8-year-old hardware. It may be possible, but I think it would be generally more cost-efficient to just upgrade just a little bit. It would be more efficient in time and power consumption, not to mention better at preserving your sanity.
    • Yea, I would love to see a CAD program from post-2000 run on a P 233 with 32 megs of RAM.
    • It's not so much today's applications won't run too well on 8 year old hardware, but that most of today's applications that are created aren't tested thoroughly (if at all) on Windows 2000.

      They are much different from a QA standpoint, even a few years ago I could take some random piece of software that worked fine on XP, throw it on 2K and watch these little creeper bugs crash the program even though the two OS's have the same kernel.

      Besides, I would like to see the huge performance increase people say 2K
    • I don't think today's typical applications would run too well on 8-year-old hardware.

      I recently had to compact a 2GB .pst file for a Client on his 733MHz Toshiba Laptop. Outlook 2002. 8 hours.

      Show me the 75MHz Pentium.

  • Can't you fit Linux on a floppy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CSMastermind ( 847625 ) <freight_train10@hotmail.com> on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:25PM (#13096091)
    Well I am impressed that it worked but I don't think it's going to imped PC sales at all. I get a new computer about once every year and a half. I still have my old computers, right back to the my frist one from 1993. I still use them all. It's amazing what you can do with old hardware. As long as technology keeps increasing I'll be buying new computers because to be honest, the current ones still don't run fast enough for me.

  • Short answer no (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13096100)

    Nerds won't have to buy new PCs. People in the mainstream will have to throw their PCs away as they would rather upgrade than spend money on virus removal.

    Also, expect some sort of "super-virus" to force everyone to upgrade to the next version of windows. The purpose behind this is to make sure that everyone has DRM enabled(i.e. crippled) computers.
  • This is a machine that has everything stripped out of it, including service releases and associated security patches, networking code, etc.
    As Gates knows so well, feature competition on new systems is just as much related to security as bells-and-whistles. As long as hackers are breaking OSs, you'll need more and more code to plug the leaks. In fact, you'll probably end up with ten times as much security code as feature code. It shouldn't be that way, but there it is.

    Politics: More Annoying Than Commerci [whattofix.com]

    • Re:Not at all (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ImaLamer ( 260199 )
      When this first appeared on OSNews 2 days ago [osnews.com] a lot of us pointed out then that this entire article is ridiculous. They want you to install 2K and not update it and everything else, things which aren't possible. Then most of the "fixes" are disabling this or that service which is 4th grade hacking.

      Considering a lot of code for 2000 came from systems being developed before the advent of the Pentium II it can be forced to work on slower machines with a few hardware hacks. First, we know that I/O is going to

  • Old does not mean useless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13096107) Homepage
    Until the hard drive crashed last month I was running Win 2K on this old Fujitsu Lifebook D765X Pentium Laptop [cgi.ebay.ca]. My sig other took the "good" laptop to Nova Scotia, so I travelled to San Francisco with this one.

    Although slow, the machine actually ran quite OK, even logging into wireless networks and surfing the 'net. Office '97 ran just dandy, as did everything else that I usually have installed.

    Pentium 166, 48 megs RAM. Stable as a rock.

    I doubt very much that XP would even install on this machine, but 2K was happy as a clam.
  • I don't think this will impede hardware sales at all. People always want what is new, fast and flashy. Most users aren't looking for the most productivity for their dollar, and hence buy systems with much more power then they will ever need. It is like this in all areas, thats why people tend to buy new cars even when their rusty car still runs fine.

  • WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

    by illtron ( 722358 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13096110) Homepage Journal
    My employer thankfully just bought us new 3.2 GHz PCs to replace our 1 GHz machines with Win 2K from 2001.

    Screw compatible, I need to get my work done today. Those old PCs were painfully slow running Win2K. Even just simple resizing of photos in Photoshop was asking a lot.

    Combine that with the fact that the interface on XP is still inconsistent crap compared to OS X, and things still take too long to accomplish.
    • Were the old machines slow crappy Dell P4s?

      I'm constantly amazed by how much faster my P3 800 is than the 1.8Ghz P4 I use daily at work. It's most likely a hard drive speed issue, since I have a fast SCSI drive in the P3, but still... For every day tasks, high end P3s are more than enough computer.

  • Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <shadow.wrought@g ... minus herbivore> on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13096111) Homepage Journal
    does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?

    Yes, it does impede sales. However, that's just part of the equation. PC hardware seems to walked into the Land of Diminishing Returns. The extra cost of new hardware doesn't seem justified when the systems that people have work fast enough them. If your computer does everything you want it to, why upgrade?

  • and what they want to do with the computer and what they want to use it for. You bet you can get away with doing your email and typing up your resume with an older PC..

    But I dont think alot of people doing graphic work want to be on an older slower PC, as well the gamers certainly dont want to be fraggin at 5 FPS.

    You cant really make a blanket statement about it hurting sales since people have different uses for computers.
  • Who cares?

    Namely who cares about the question posed to start this thread... I sure as hell don't have 8 year old hardware... or want to waste time experimenting by running an OS that wasn't meant to be run on there.

    I'm not fond of MS but I'm not sure how this all fits into anything for justifying that position.

    Who cares... waste of time, typing, browsing (this thrad).

    -M

  • Yes, and? So does Windows XP. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zerbey ( 15536 ) * on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#13096122) Homepage Journal
    The writer of this article is a little strange if he considers a P233 old hardware. Back when Windows 2000 came out (1999, kids) I was using a P233 as my primary machine.

    He makes one excellent point at the end: memory. Memory is what Windows needs more than anything. Once you remove all the cuddly crap, Windows 2000 and XP runs perfectly well on a classic Pentium so long as it has 128Mb or more. Preferably 256 with XP.

    I've never tried XP or 2000 on a 486, but I would be willing to bet it'd run fine (NT certainly did). Anyone else tested this?

  • 2000? Not Surprising! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by atteSmythe ( 874236 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#13096124)
    Is it surprising that a 5-year-old operating system still runs 8-year-old hardware? That's the hardware for which the operating system was designed!

    A more pertinent question, I think, would be whether 2000 still runs with full support for new hardware devices, and whether that forward-compatibility hampers new OS sales.

  • 95% (Score:3, Interesting)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:28PM (#13096133) Homepage
    Compatible with 95% of things.. so 1 in every 20 applications won't work.

    Sounds like rather a lot to me.

    I see no reason why, if you design your API correctly and extensibly in the first place, with good modularisation, your OS shouldn't be compatible with code in 50 or 100 years time, let alone 5. Backwards compatibility is useful. Especially in computing where projects are rarely maintained beyond the second or third stable release. I don't quite see why moving forward should necessarily leave old applications broken.
    • No, more like 19.9999 in 20 Applications will run, but 1 in 20 of the new features of the latest version of the software won't work right.

      But no one actually uses those features, so you're mostly OK.
    • The majority of the time it is because of new hardware features (ie - ISA vs. PCI vs. AGP), chipset instructions being removed that legacy applications used, etc.

      New standards being adopted that make running legacy applications virtually impossible is the biggest hurdle.

  • Here's your answer (Score:2, Informative)

    by BaudKarma ( 868193 )
    does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?

    Sure it does. Are we looking for someone to blame? How about the hardware industry, for spending all that money to make speedy whizbang processors and huge warehouselike hard drives that hardly anybody needs?
  • I would really like to see the basis for the '95% compatible with Windows XP' statement.

    Half the stuff I have will run on XP but not Windows 2000. That's the whole reason I got the XP "pay-for upgrade" in the first place.

  • Ye, you can use older machines to run Windows 2000. You can tweak the hell out of services and effects and it'll run smooth as butter.

    Would I follow this guy's advice? Hell no. He doesn't want to patch or update anything. His setup would be a good for a person who never needed internet access.

    It's like saying "Hay guyz, Redhat 4 runs on old systems great if you don't patch to the latest version!@!!"
  • my formerly computerphobic daughter had to go mobile and on a shoestring budget...she got an ancient Toshiba 8500 series laptop. By adding a bit of memory, and downloading a BIOS patch from Toshiba, she got it to run win2k. 6 months later, its still a happy laptop. We will have to upgrade from win2k someday...

    ...to Linux.

  • Ignorant article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Helevius ( 456392 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:32PM (#13096207) Homepage
    "DONT install an extra service pack (they can offer perfromance and reliability improvements on faster computers but on old computers with few tasks they are just a bloat). Make sure your Windows installation CD isn't already 'slipstreamed' with a service pack."

    and

    "How to use the computer on a daily basis...Don't apply O/S patches for security stability or other things."

    This is advice from an idiot for other idiots. I'm sure the worms and other malware you invite onto this system will make great use of the "more than 10 MB RAM left for your applications."
  • The answer is: No, my empty purse seriously impedes PC sales.
  • ...with a little technical TLC every now-and-then. Like the Times article about how people buy new PCs because of spyware, most consumers cannot figure out the insanity of Windows. They certainly can't figure out that their new computer does almost nothing more for them then their old computer -- the only difference is that the old one "stopped working."

  • Win2k is my favorite Windows. It runs everything that XP does (don't know where the OP got 95% from), doesn't have the activation bullshit, and is just more stable and less resource hungry than XP.

    That being said, I've come across multiple new or newer hardwares that don't support Win2k properly.

    Examples:

    I bought a Dell 4550 years ago, perhaps circa 2002 or 2003. It would not run Win2k out of the box - audio hardware was unsupported, and drives only ran in DMA mode under XP. Same with Linux. Much complai

  • Windows Server 2003 is the new Windows 2000 (Score:5, Informative)

    by sabNetwork ( 416076 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:37PM (#13096269)

    Windows 2000 is amazing-- blazing fast and solid as a rock. I tried XP for a couple months and quickly switched back to 2000. Unfortunately, as Microsoft slowly discontinues updates, patches, and support for Windows 2000, you will eventually have to migrate to XP, 2k3, or Longhorn.

    I installed Windows Server 2003 a year or two ago and haven't looked back. It has all of the stability and speed of 2000, except with the improved compatibility and features of XP. Subjectively, I can tell you that it doesn't "deteriorate" like XP does. (Your mileage may vary.) And did I mention it was blazing fast on my dated hardware?

    It uses a newer kernel than XP, for the record. One of the major differences I've noticed is that windows redraw more smoothly with less flickering, especially in Explorer. It includes XP's WiFi connectivity features, too.

    There's an excellent site [msfn.org] dedicated to using Server 2003 as a workstation, including instructions on how to disable unnecessary services and processes.

  • So long as what the computer vendors and hardware manufacturers produce are things people can use and not just buy for the frills of it you'll have sales.

    Like yeah, I *could* do my development on a 25Mhz 386 with 16M of ram...

    However, I also like 19 second build times, the ability to run more indepth simulations for testing, etc...

    So yes, there are needs for things like dual core multiple Ghz processors even if they seem excessive for "word processing".

    Unfortunately, the amount of people on earth who tr
  • For anecdotal evidence, Windows 2000 is the most modern OS that runs on my old 1998 Dell Inspiron 3500 with 100% functionality. All linux distros choke on the NeoMagic sound card, 2 out of 3 choke on the NeoMagic video card. I hate to give it up because it still works.. even the battery still holds a couple hour charge.
  • Runs Debian Linux. Half the computers in there are Celeron 400mhz boxes, and the rest are P4 2.4ghz. Interestingly enough the performance difference is not noticable.

    Now move to the Windows XP lab. There's a bunch of 400mhz Celeron boxes (same brand, etc) with XP, and some 2.4Ghz boxes with XP. The 2.4Ghz boxes boot up about 4-5 times faster, and take 2 seconds, instead of 15 seconds, to load Firefox. Etc.

    The Celerons in the Linux lab load Firefox faster than the 2.4Ghz P4s in the XP lab. A trib

  • Okay (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:46PM (#13096365) Journal
    I'd just say:

    Nlite [nliteos.com], nuff said.

    But then you wouldn't see how this measures up to the article in question. So I'll say it like this:

    Windows XP SP2 running on a Pentium 166 mhz with 32 meg RAM, only possible with Nlite [nliteos.com].

    I ran this along with Xampp [sourceforge.net] to provide myself with a nice little development box that could still use Firefox/Thunderbird so roommates could read the web, play web games, and check their email.

    I didn't hear any complaining except during playback of certain XviD and DivX files in BSplayer.
  • It all depends on what prompts you to buy new hardware. Are you playing games mainly? Then I don't think it will matter much, f you stay with current games. Rendering animations? Yeah, then you probably will buy towards the latest and greatest end. Checking email and web-browsing from home? Not likely.

    It's not so much the OS version and PC speed, but whether it does what you need it to do FOR YOU....in a relatively painless manner. If you have an 8 year old machine running win2k, but your CAD program is

  • That's virgin Windows 2000 with no service patches (or apps for that matter). The 64 Mb is critical. I discovered all of this back when Windows 2000 was in beta (1998), and we installed it on some machines that were running NT 4.0.

    FYI. Windows 2000 development at M$ was done on Pentium/Pentium II class hardware, with a big machine sporting 128 MB memory. Intel only started shipping Pentium III's around its release.

    M$ changed things with SP2, and forced the memory requirement up to 128 Mb.
  • I bought a IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth [microsoft.com], ironically to use with a Mac.

    It does work on Mac OS X.

    When I tried to use it at work I found out the Bluetooth USB dongle doesn't work on Win2K Professional.

  • 2000 heck, I use 98se (Score:3, Informative)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:49PM (#13096412)
    runs Office 2000 suite just fine, scanning/printing/fax, and turbotax. Still has regular security patches from microsoft. amazing how many commercial apps run on 95/98/nt

  • Unrealistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crimoid ( 27373 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:53PM (#13096458)
    The author of that howto claims that you should:

    NOT install any service packs or patches
    NOT use NTFS
    NOT use a sound card
    NOT use removable storage (CD, USB, etc)
    NOT use windows networking
    NOT use a parallel printer
    NOT install many applications
    NOT have more than 1 application open at a time
    NOT work with big (1MB+) files

    Well WTF good is that computer then? The title of the article is "Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware". How is this performance?

  • Personal Experience != Reality for Everyone Else (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @02:59PM (#13096538) Homepage Journal
    With that said, I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. It was on a really sweet Tyan board from 1997. It installed alright, but it ran like a slug through molasses on a cold January night. The boot alone took 10-15 minutes. This system had SCSI2 drives as well, so there really were no bottle necks. No weird interrupt problems to speak of, nothing odd. So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel for SMP and tweaked it with the realtime patches. I also customized the hell out of it by just installing the very minimum of RedHat, stripping what I didn't want and installing everything from source. The end result? A super secure, super efficient system that performs as well as a P4 running at 1 Ghz. It's been running like this going on three years now. Uptimes have been incredible compared to any desktop PC I've ever used before. It plays the role of internal DNS, NTP, Web, Mail and File servers. It's also the main application server for the house with centralized everything. The rest of my systems just act as thin clients that can easily attach to an IN PROGRESS desktop session using VNC. I never log out of my VNC desktop anymore, I just lock the screen. Same for my wife and two friends who use the system via OpenVPN over the internet.

    The point to all this? I do things that you CAN'T do with Windows and this box is eight years old but feels like it's only 2 years old. Machines really should last closer to 10-15 years before having to buy a new one. The idea of the disposable machine is moronic.
    • I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. [...] The boot alone took 10-15 minutes.

      I'm not sure what was going on there, but your numbers are crazy. I ran Win2k on a P II 350 laptop with 128 MB of RAM and it booted in something around 5 minutes, probably less. It also ran reasonably well, but I'll admit I didn't use it for a whole lot (it dual-booted Debian).

      So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel f

  • What about BSD and others? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @03:16PM (#13096759) Homepage
    I have a nearly nine year old FreeBSD machine that is still running great as an email/web/ftp server. Its a Dual PIII, 1 gig of ram. Adaptec 2400a RAID. Great little machine. Rock solid. Have thought about dumping it for something faster, but.....why?

    As for Windows 2000, yeah, thats great. I suppose you can get it to run on something old, but, why? What the author is suggesting is dumb. Why not just go and get a board and chip for $150, and build something, THEN put Windows 2000 on it. I don't see how running Windows on something like that will be useful. For a server, yeah. But I'd go with Linux or FreeBSD.

    • I have a nearly nine year old FreeBSD machine that is still running great as an email/web/ftp server. Its a Dual PIII, 1 gig of ram.

      Either you added an extra "I" there, or your time-frame is completely off. The first PIIIs didn't even come out until 1999, which would be 6 years ago, not 9.

      Why not just go and get a board and chip for $150, and build something, THEN put Windows 2000 on it.

      Because then you are wasting $150 (probably more, actually). A slightly slower computer works just fine, thank y

  • He runs it on FAT, and disables all file security and so forth. In practical terms, this system is no better than Windows 98. For such purposes, load up Windows 98SE, and use Win98Lite [litepc.com] to use the (much less resource-intensive) Win95 shell on top of Win98.

    Just as secure, and you can have more functionality (e.g. sound!).

    Of course, better yet, you can use Linux. I've got a 32MB laptop that runs Debian (with XFCE). A bit slow, but I can actually surf the web and so forth, and even play a game or two. And do it with actual security.

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