Microsoft Windows XP runs pretty fast on old computers!

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Microsoft Windows XP runs pretty fast on old computers!

For the longest time, I've refrained installing anything other than Windows 98 on my old laptop computers. I have several old laptops with Intel Pentium II MMX chips that run ~300 MHz. I've tried installing Windows 2000 on one Acer TravelMate with 350 MHz CPU, and the performance was a crawl. So I didn't dare installing Windows XP on it, thinking that Windows XP is a resource hog.

However, just last week, I received the HP Omnibook 500 with a 700 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM that I bought off eBay. It came with Windows XP preloaded. I was skeptical that it could run Windows XP smoothly. But after getting it, Windows XP ran extremely smooth, proving that I lacked knowledge in what Windows XP really needs to run.

After reading that Windows XP Professional could be used on 233 MHz CPU with only 64 MB of RAM from XP Requirements, I decided to give it a try.

My guinea pig is a Sony VAIO PCG-748 notebook. It has a 266 MHz MMX processor, 192 MB of RAM, and 4 GB hard disk. I wanted to see if it's true that Windows XP Professional can run exceptionally well on this computer, relative to the Windows 98 that is currently installed. After all Windows 98 is a pain when it comes to drivers and the web browsers for it no longer works with today's web sites.

After spending approximately an hour installing Windows XP Professional, the notebook booted up fine. Operations in Windows XP Professional wasn't any slower than Windows 98. And all the drivers installed correctly all by themselves with no manual intervention. I did have to choose the higher 1024x768 resolution myself in Display Settings. Best of all, even the web pages render very fast with Firefox 2.0. The installation only took up 1.5 GB of disk space. After applying all of the Windows updates, it went up to 2.5 GB.

With Windows XP Professional running exceptionally well on the Sony VAIO PCG-748, I'm a firm believer that Windows XP can run exceptionally well on old computers.

Chieh Cheng
Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:47:27 -0700

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Title: Windows XP boots endlessly on start up
Weblog: GearHack
Excerpt: This is my Sony VAIO PCG-748 notebook computer. It turns out one of the Windows update components is incompatible. As soon as I apply all the updates to date, the computer would exhibit this symptom. But if I reinstall Windows XP from scratch and disable automatic update, the notebook will work just . . .
Tracked: Sun, 11 May 2008 02:11:45 +0000

Title: Older Computers Serve Well as Remote Terminals
Weblog: GearHack
Excerpt: Quite a while back, I wrote about "Microsoft Windows XP runs pretty fast on old computers!" on this site. It documented how Windows XP can run comfortably on a slow 233 MHz machine. Using that idea, I successfully installed it on my 266 MHz notebook computer. My 266 MHz Sony VAIO PCG-748 still ru . . .
Tracked: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:57:52 +0000

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