minimum hard disk/cpu question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Gower
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Dave Gower

I've got a Panasonic Toughbook which I use for simple tasks (note-taking,
calculations, a little surfing). It works great and I would hate to throw it
away, but I am getting tired of the Win98 that it came with, which is far
inferior to XP that I have gotten used to on my main computer, and anyway is
way overdue for reinstall.

The Toughbook has a 64M CPU and a 2G HD. According to the Microsoft website,
64M is the minimum (128 recommended) and 1.5G disk space. Am I going to
encounter problems if I try to upgrade with hardware this close to the
minimum? Is it even worth it?
 
64MB is the minimum memory, 233Mhz is the minimum processor speed. the
install of XP alone, requires 1.5GB worth of the hard drive, not much room
for anything else when you get finished installing. XP is extremely
graphics intensive and likely well beyond the capability of that Toughbook,
you likely can't get XP drivers for all the hardware and assuming you could
get it installed, it would run slower than molasses on a freezing day.

You can turn off the eye candy though it won't make a lot of difference on
the setup you describe and if you do, it will look very similar to Win98.

Is it even worth it...short answer, no!
 
You would have much better luck with Windows 2000 Pro. However, first check
the Panasonic website to see if Panasonic has drivers for W2k or XP. With a
laptop that is vital. If the drivers are not available, don't try it.
 
Dave said:
I've got a Panasonic Toughbook which I use for simple tasks
(note-taking, calculations, a little surfing). It works great and I
would hate to throw it away, but I am getting tired of the Win98 that
it came with, which is far inferior to XP that I have gotten used to
on my main computer, and anyway is way overdue for reinstall.

The Toughbook has a 64M CPU and a 2G HD. According to the Microsoft
website, 64M is the minimum (128 recommended) and 1.5G disk space. Am
I going to encounter problems if I try to upgrade with hardware this
close to the minimum? Is it even worth it?
Click to expand...

Leave it alone, or go with Win 2K as Dave Gower suggests. The hard drive is
really too small for 2k, but it will work.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
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I actually thought 128 meg ram and 500mhtz Pentium III is the minimum
recommended.

From what I've read, the laptop seems to be a little to out of the depth of
Windows XP....I wouldn't bother attempting it.
 
Dave said:
The Toughbook has a 64M CPU and a 2G HD. According to the Microsoft
Click to expand...

You mean 64 MB of _RAM_, right?
website, 64M is the minimum (128 recommended) and 1.5G disk space. Am
I going to encounter problems if I try to upgrade with hardware this
close to the minimum?
Click to expand...

XP under 64 MB of RAM is very slow, and I believe some features may even be
turned off. I even find XP painful with the recommended minimum of 128. 256
is my (and many others) recommended minimum, and even then you can usually
gain a lot by going to 512.

As for your hard drive, 2 GB is not going to work. A minimum XP installation
requires around 1.5 GB. And if you hope for having SP2 you better install XP
with SP2 slipstreamed, unless you want to lose another 0.5 GB. Considering
the amount of RAM you have you will also _definitely_ need a pagefile if you
even want the computer to boot, let alone get any work done. And where on
earth are you gonna fit your documents? Or applications?
Is it even worth it?
Click to expand...

Not unless you couple it with a major hardware overhaul as well. You will at
the very least have to double both your RAM and HD, and even then it is
going to be tight.

I see others recommend trying Windows 2000, but I think also this will be a
lot for your computer to chew on in it's current state.

The way I see it you have two viable options:

1) Stick with 98. But bear in mind that this OS is no longer supported, so
there may not be patches available to security holes that may (and will!)
turn up. Thus you should make damn sure you are protected by other means.
Make sure that you have a properly configured firewall and an updated virus
killer installed at all times.

2) Get a new computer. If you cannot bear the thought of throwing (or
giving) your Toughbook away then I suggest installing something like Linux
or FreeBSD on it. It may not make your computer a killer desktop
workstation, but it will mean you have an updated OS that the computer is
capable of running, and it can still serve a purpose. For instance it can
work as your home firewall, or a portable thin client.
 
In
Andrew Murray said:
I actually thought 128 meg ram and 500mhtz Pentium III is the
minimum
recommended.
Click to expand...


No, the offical minimum is 64MB and a 233MHz processor, but that
says nothing about what's needed for adequate performance A
233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM would crawl.

How much RAM you need depends greatly on what apps you run, but
most people running common business apps need at least 256MB. And
I'd want to have a processor at least 350MHZ or so.

My wife runs Windows XP on a PII-400 with 256MB of RAM. It's
certainly no speed demon, but it's adequate for her use.
 
André Gulliksen said:
1) Stick with 98. But bear in mind that this OS is no longer supported, so
there may not be patches available to security holes that may (and will!)
turn up.
Click to expand...

I realize that this isn't a Win98 newsgroup, but could I pursue this for a
moment? MS Corp is still issuing patches for 98 on their website, I just
downloaded some yesterday. Do you have any reason to suspect that they would
not continue to do that? I do use AVS plus my ISP's email anti-virus, which
seems to be working.

As to buying a new laptop, yeah I check over the stock whenever I'm in
Future Shop or Staples, but the Toughbook was a really magnificent machine
(very expensive in its time, and new ones still are) and although not the
most powerful, has a wonderful screen and keyboard feel.
 
Dave Gower said:
I realize that this isn't a Win98 newsgroup, but could I pursue this for a
moment? MS Corp is still issuing patches for 98 on their website, I just
downloaded some yesterday. Do you have any reason to suspect that they
would not continue to do that? I do use AVS plus my ISP's email
anti-virus, which seems to be working.
Click to expand...

MS has several levels of support, which drop off over time.

But the other thing you may be facing is that other vendors will cease
supporting the 9x line. That's not going to make a difference if you run the
laptop as-is, but if you want to install new software or you need to install
some new hardware or peripheral, you may find that you can't get drivers.
 
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