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XP on an old laptop with 384 MB RAM - anyone done it and how does it work?
#1
A friends old Dull had a HDD failure, nothing can be recovered with the usual stuff, so a new drive and reinstall of the OS is in order (trash can is also in order but not an option). It has a Netgear PCMCIA wireless card for which the utility to connect and configure is no longer available on the Netgear site nor, after a lot of Googling, is available anywhere else where I'd care to go and download. W2K will not find wireless signals without using the utility but XP will. So, the question is - am I looking at a lot of frustration on their part with XP so I can use the card or should I have stayed with W2K and got a new wireless card? Basic use of the laptop is eBay browsing - the friend is a coin collector - email and general surfing. No heavy work at all. I don't believe increasing the RAM is an option as I think it's maxed. I could be wrong on that - Inspiron 5000 is the model.

Actually, I've already installed XP after finding that I couldn't use the wireless on W2K, so what I'm asking is not whether I should do it, but if I'm going to get a lot of heat for having done it.
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#2
May have 2 RAM slots, and might take a gig. If so, pull the 128 and put in a 512.
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#3
Racer X wrote:
May have 2 RAM slots, and might take a gig. If so, pull the 128 and put in a 512.

I'm pretty sure that's correct, as I believe I have a 256 and a 128 in it (although 128 might be on the MB) - I added RAM a couple years ago and don't remember what the configuration was.

However, the question is whether this is going to be such a slug with 384 that they won't be able to use it rather than what I can do to make it better.

MB) equals Motherboard - I hate these automatic smilies
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#4
my ex had a p4 1.7 Dull craptop with XP and 384 megs. It was tolerable. I bumped it up to 768, and it helped.

My Dull at work is also a P4 1.7 with XP and 640 megs.
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#5
It will totally suck with 384MB, IMHO. Painfully slow to redraw windows, to load anything, to boot....yuck.
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#6
Oh please...for all those who think that a P IV won't work well enough, try a ThinkPad T20 (PIII 700 with 196 megs). Win XP runs fine.
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#7
Rethinking the whole question, it occurs to me that we had a potload of PIII and PIVs running XP with just 256 MB at work (when I had a job). Of course I campaigned to up them to a gig but AIR, they did chug along at 256. I'm sure this will be satisfactory for the use it will be put to. Thanks for the comments.

I just installed WinBlows 7 beta on the Dull and of course there's no driver for my Buffalo USB wireless adapter, so the question in the thread above has become moot. I have it connected by ethernet cable now.

As usual, Bill's minions spent the majority of their time drawing kindergarden icons for this release and moving things around so nothing is found where you'd expect it to be. At least AVG Free installed and seems to be working.

Just got a call from the laptop owner (I gave it back to them this morning). Says it runs fine and no more sluggish than it was with W2K, so all is well.
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#8
XP can run just about as well as Win2K if you turn off most of the extras in XP. One that helps especially is using the so-called Classic Windows desktop. There are a number of other things as well, a number of websites give hints and directions on doing so.
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#9
XP will run with 256 MB, just hit the hard drive all the time for virtual memory. The leaner it is the better, so no video players, flash, QuickTime, iTunes, etc. The biggest problem is antivirus. A lot of the current ones can make it choke.

Pretty soon the second round of after inventory sales are going to start. There should be one day sales of 1.6 GHz laptops with 1 GB of RAM for about $250 pop up.
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#10
Use Linux.
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