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[dosraider]

A 20 GB HD isn't really enough for a dual boot IMO, it can be done, but it's kinda crappy.

As for the live CD: It will give you an idea what Ubu is about, but it's far from the real thing, as it's slow (CD speed<HD speed) and it takes in fact too long to load and set up the kernel.
But yeah, you can get an idea ..... nothing more.

About W98SE: ask around, there are enough CDs laying around somewhere.
BTW, remark I talk about W98SE, and that's the one you should go for.

[Edit]
A propos, if you really want to try Ubuntu or Xubuntu you'd better register and talk about it on the Ubu forums, there you'll get the best answers.
As far as I know there are Ubu forums in almost any language.

[red_avatar]

You can buy Windows 98 for next to nothing anyway. But still, what you plan to do with it pretty much dictates what you should go for.

[Juanca]

Originally Posted by red_avatar

You can buy Windows 98 for next to nothing anyway. But still, what you plan to do with it pretty much dictates what you should go for.

It will be a computer mainly for internet browsing, watching videos, listening music and from time to time using the word processor and spreadsheet (not gaming)

[Eagle of Fire]

For that kind of use then you should definitely at least go with Windows XP. XP service pack 1 is perfect, that's what I been using for the past five years.

Playing games will not be a factor for you, but using Words could be if you stick with lower version of Windows. And since what you plan to do with the laptop is to do all the "trendy" things on the 'net about every joe average use or do on the 'net those days then you require something which is or will be compatible easily with modern utilities.

So, unless you are really felling adventurous or want to settle a personnal goal by exploring a new OS like Unbuntu, I'd recommend that you stick with XP SP1.

I really don't understand what the appeal of Windows 98SE would be. I used it for many years and you can't use the OS more than about 8 hours without having heavy stability failures and having to reboot. XP is way better in almost all aspects... Except for compatibility.

[red_avatar]

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

I really don't understand what the appeal of Windows 98SE would be. I used it for many years and you can't use the OS more than about 8 hours without having heavy stability failures and having to reboot. XP is way better in almost all aspects... Except for compatibility.

Well it beats Windows XP on low hardware when it comes to performance. Since this is a laptop, I doubt he'd leave it running for hours on end anyway. I'm mostly worried about the 256MB RAM he has. That's the minimum for Windows XP to work properly and browsers these days eat memory like mad! My own old P4 laptop had 512MB and was already pushing itself.

Of course, if you want to surf, Windows XP is a must since you won't get many up-to-date browsers for Windows 98.

[AlumiuN]

Originally Posted by red_avatar

Well it beats Windows XP on low hardware when it comes to performance. Since this is a laptop, I doubt he'd leave it running for hours on end anyway. I'm mostly worried about the 256MB RAM he has. That's the minimum for Windows XP to work properly and browsers these days eat memory like mad! My own old P4 laptop had 512MB and was already pushing itself.

Of course, if you want to surf, Windows XP is a must since you won't get many up-to-date browsers for Windows 98.

I've got 512 mB and 446 mB of RAM on my desktop and laptop respectively, and both run incredibly sluggishly after running three or four different processes. So I would also suggest 98SE.

[Juanca]

Thanks a lot friends,
I will keep xp sp1 for a time and in the meanwhile find a copy of windows 98se somewhere on the internet for free (any suggestion please pm me).

[dosraider]

BTW, W2K would also run pretty fine on such configuration, it's not as greedy as XP.
Advantage is that on W2K most up-to-date software will run.

Just a thought ...
BTW, I talk about W2Ksp4 ......

[Japo]

Why outdated SP1? Do you have evidence that updates make Windows slower? You can always disable unnecessary services and stuff, that's unrelated to service pack.

[_r.u.s.s.]

juanca sp1 misses some vital security patches and many programs or applications won't actually run, since they require dot net framework v2 or higher, which requires at least sp2 to have installed