If you are fit with computers, you can handle the situtation very easy. Split your resources and turn a little bit your knobs.
I bought my little treasure 4 years ago. Is an Acer Aspire One 150L, surprisingly much faster than the best equipped one (normal size laptop) of the same year.
Maybe they put to much stuff in it.
Well on this little fellow.. I have put different versions of MW on it to run older and newer programms, games etc. and it's working out pretty well. Often you can run a old game properly if you shut graphics, and what else is needed, a little bit down. Futher you can get out of the internet these nice tools and applications which are allowing you to run the rest. Or run the right windows mode, sometimes it is helping, too.
There are so many ways to handle a new computer to make it work with older stuff.
I am happy, because of (hobby) programmers of today. They are creating games to suit everyones need. You can find from DOS to ..... everything.
my adventure will hopefully run from windows 98 till 7 (32 / 64 bit)