Advice fo an old laptop
 

Hi I just received an old laptop
with 256 mb of ram, pentium 4 inside...

It is running with windows xp service pack 1. I cleaned it up and left only
office 2003, newest version of firefox, boclean, ccleaner, avira antivirus latest version, vlc media player. IT is running ok, but kind of slow at the start (I was not expecting anything else anyway)

It will be a computer mainly for internet browsing, and entertainment: movies and music mainly (for the children).

Do you think I can enhance its performance if I switch to the latest version of ubuntu? With this OS is it true that I should not worry about antiviruses and antispywares or firewalls? So this means I can get rid of the antivirus and antispyware stuff?
I have read about it and seems an interesting option but I would like to receive some feedback from real users (and mainly if someone has the same situation using ubuntu on an old laptop)

Any other suggestion most than welcome
:OK:

I already answered this part of the question on this forum site
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Antivirus
And I am retty sure I won't need any anitvirus, antispyware or other firewall than the one by default.

I am still waiting for some feedback from anyone using ubuntu or xubuntu. which one is better for my system? what do you recommend? please post your ideas :)

Xubuntu I would say.
It's a bit low on RAM to run Ubuntu.

It all depends on what you want to get out of it, I guess. That laptop seems ideal for installing Windows 98 (which may have been the original OS judging by the amount of RAM) and playing DOS games on.

the original os is still the windows xp service pack 1.
Xubuntu seems to be the option.
now is it going to really enhance the performance or not much?
:swordfight:

Why don't you simply try it?
If your HD is big enough you could dual-boot.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/

BTW, also what Red says, W98SE on such system is extremely fast.

If your soundcard has Windows 98 drivers, I'd say go for Windows 98. It's indeed very fast - faster than Windows XP in any case - and Windows XP will be pretty useless for running games post 2001 anyway with a weak setup like that and most games prior to that run fine in Windows 98 and a great deal better there than in Windows XP.

But, like I said, you need to be lucky with the drivers. Windows 98 only takes up 2GB anyway.

Thank you both for the advice, but how do i get a copy of a windows 98se for free?
I think I will try the dual boot that says dosraider...but what do you mean about a big HD...the laptop one is 20 gb...big enough?

What do you think about a live cd
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Will it give me an idea of the performance? or this is only useful to start seeing how it works and the features it has but cannot show me how fast or slow can that laptop become?

Already got my answer :hysterical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOMwcEDqig8

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.

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)

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.

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.

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).

:thanks::closed:

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 ......

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

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

But then again, SP2 is also even crappier for old software while SP1 allows you to keep playing old games without as much trouble.

Beleive me, I know...

For Some reason I thought it would make it slower, and I do have a copy of win xp sp3... so should i upgrade it without making it even slower?

about disableing applications I already disabled as many apps as possible (messenger, msn, explorer, windows media player ....)

right now it is working fine...little bit slow but fine...the thing is that when i received it did not have any antivirus or antimalware installed and it was working pretty fast. Then I installed avira and boclean (not many resources needed) but you can see the difference of performance. So if an antivirus is a must, I started thinking maybe I should change the OS. And here I am trying to get the best from the old laptop :embarassed:

maybe I should also ask if there are less resource-demanding but strong antiviruses, or is there a better, not so demanding confirguration for security.

From experience, installing "new" software in old PC and expecting the resource allocation to be "small" is a huge mistake. "New" software, especially those which got out after Vista came out, take for granted that you will be using a beast to run them. The definition of "minimal resource use" changed over time.

I've had software installed in my computer for years which simply refused to work when I updated their version. But they still updated their defintion files fine with the old version, without the need to update, and that without any problem.

If you wish to find the "optimal" performance then I suggest that you go look at oldversion.com for older version of the same programs.

beeeeep big mistake. service pack 2 with security leaks patched +even the default firewall equals no threats unless you download very suspicious files. viruses don't pop up for themselves (if you have security leaks closed), they install only after you manually open suspicious excutables or scripts.

i run without any antivirus. at first i had that basic microsoft preinstalled firewall but then after i closed all the holes i don't even use that one. it works like that for about 2 years now and recently i ran a virus scan just out of curiousity, 0 threads, 0 infectinos

for start, disable autoruns on all your drives with tweakUI (saves you a lot of trouble, believe me)

and close the most critical holes with windows worm hole cleaner

Since you're not using any specialized programs (Photoshop, etc.) just get a LiveCD of Ubuntu, Debian, or any other Linux distro.

Thanks a lot It seems reasonable and a very good option I think I will go for that one. BTW how did you make the virus scan after two years? online virus scan or just install a program and uninstall it?

i used this online free scanner by kaspersky lab (one of the best antiviruses, only nod can compete)

Ok, I am following Russ advices + using a users limited account and it is working pretty good.

Do you think I should get also a full recovery program? those programs that recover not only the system but also all your files and software and configuration as it was in case of any crash or virus?
Do you have any to recommend?( freeware please.:) as always)

for that i recommend using windows defualt recovery thingy

WINDOWS\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe

Yes I thougt the same but The main difference with other programs is that you can restore the system even before windows starts to load. with this windows system restore the best you can do is to go to safe mode at the beginning and restore the system from there... Am I right?

yes exactly. i dunno what could i recommend for "external" system restore, never had experience or need to do anything like that :)

that default windows thing always worked for me

(btw i hope you already locked your wormholes with program i posted to you!)

Yes I already did it thanks a lot I already used both applications on all computers.
thank you very much
:max: