"JM" wrote:

1) Upgrading to IE6 on a Win98 machine will probably end up in a lot of
trouble. Many people had problems after installing IE6. IE6 was clearly
not written for Windows 98.

Was true with the original release of IE6 for some people at least.
With the release of Service Pack 1 for IE6 these problems have been
resolved and there have been very few problems with IE6 on Windows 98
Machines since then. I use it myself on the one Windows 98 machine in
my home and I recommend to all my customers who are running Windows 98
that they upgrade to IE6SP1.



2) Upgrading to Windows XP on a sub ghz machine, it can be too slow. It'll
probably work on a Pentium 3 processor, but don't install XP on anything
lower than that.

RAM can compensate a lot for a slower CPU with Windows XP. I am quite
comfortable with the performance of Windows XP on machines with CPUs
as slow as 400 mhz provided there is at least 512 mb of RAM for CPUs
under 800 mhz and at least 384 mb of RAM for CPUs in the 800 mhz to
1.2 ghz range.



3) Ok. So now what? Does that mean our aging computers are stuck with
Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5 ? NO!

I must blow away Microsoft's little secret. The version of windows you want
is Windows 2000. Windows XP is basically just Windows 2000, but with all
that cute graphical bloat added (among other useless bloat). Windows XP's
bloat just adds to the memory requirements, and processor load. Windows XP
was clearly written for multi-ghz machines.

Windows 2000 is quite seriously lacking in support for a lot of
specialized hardware and is not a good choice for anyone who does a
lot of multimedia work and/or who plays a lot of games. I am also not
certain of the level of USB support, especially USB2, that is
available in Windows 2000.


Windows 2000 is 99 percent compatible with Windows XP. Windows 2000 is
actually about 10 percent faster than Windows 98. So, it translates to
this. You can take that old 120 mhz machine, and install Windows 2000 on
it, and it'll run a bit faster, and it will be compatible with Windows XP.
And you'll be able to install Internet Explorer 6 without problems.

No IE6 problems, but then Windows 98 doesn't have these any longer
either, not since Service Pack 1.

And Windows 2000 does require more RAM than Windows 98.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."