On 18 Feb 2013, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

This comp has a 1ghz processor and 500m of Ram, which is
the limit.

(By limit I take it you mean you can't add more RAM.) I
don't think the processor would be a problem - this is only
a 1.6 - but the RAM would be a bit minimal even for XP SP2;
for SP3 it would be painful. (I currently seem to have 834M
in use.)

At the moment I'm running XP on a 1GHz machine with 512MB RAM
and it runs fine for general use (internet, word processing
(what shouldn't?), playing videos/music (unless it's online, I
always download it in that case)), I also use it for some video
work, though I can't claim it's ideal for that. This is my main
PC and I feel no need to upgrade the RAM, though I actually have
many 512MB sticks that could pair up to double my current
amount.

I think the problem is all the useless bloat M$ added to the
service packs (not that the original wasn't bloated enough).
Though on the other hand, I've been at work killing bits of XP I
don't like. Most notably (and memorably) I replaced Explorer
with "LiteStep" for window management and "Gyula's Navigator"
for file management. I run the JayOS Skin for LiteStep which is
much more 98ish than the XP "Classic" theme and _far_ more
customisable as well. I ended up doing the same thing to one of
my W98 machines too.

I now much prefer this set up than explorer. Though I think
Explorer's memory usage was one of the main reasons (along with
a bug that forced me to restart it all the time) for turning to
LiteStep originally. So perhaps I'm talking nonsense in saying
that the original XP runs fine on 512MB.

Still, you could always take my approach and shape XP to meet
your needs. It can be a bit of work though. Or just keep 98 and
avoid bloated websites, I use Firefox 3.6 with XP anyway and
rarely want to use a site it doesn't like.

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