Win XP Vs. Win Me

[Potatoman]

Hi. I have a really old laptop that currently runs XP. But its REALLY REALLY slow. Its has 64Mb (lol) RAM and something like a 500Mhz cpu. If i ditched XP and reformatted it with Me, would it make it run faster? I have no intention on using the internet with it, so im not fussed about security.

[boobesque]

operating systems advance alongside current technology so me does indeed use less power than xp. not much though. you would be better off buying some ram. the 500MHz processor is slow but the ram is more of a pressing issue.

[vehelpfulguy]

I am surprised Windows XP even runs on 64Mb, it must be the absolute minimum for XP. 

Microsoft have created two main generations of Windows.

The first was Windows 95, which became Windows 98, which became Windows ME. These versions of Windows were basically DOS with a graphical front end, and hence run in less memory.  

The other generation was Windows NT, which became Windows 2000, which became Windows XP (and also became Windows 2003 for servers).

This started out as a server product so was more robust, but also more memory hungry.

If you cannot increase the memory of the laptop then Windows ME will run much faster than XP.  

[ajmmac]

windows ME is pretty rubbage and unstable--go for win98 SE--much better and will run faster than xp

[OBonio]

It won't make it run faster. It will make it appear to run faster as it is less resource intensive hence giving your programs more time slices (read <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/libra ry/en-us/dllproc/base/multitasking.asp">multitasking& lt;/a>).

Also, swapfile size doesn't need to be as big on ME and so less disk thrashing than XP. Laptop HDD speeds aren't up to much either so, in theory, the smaller the swapfile needed the better.

Maybe try something like <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> Linux. That will run fine!

[OBonio]

Those links in full :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/libra ry/en-us/dllproc/base/multitasking.asp

http://www.debian.org/

Teach me for trying to get clever with this site's god awful auto formatting algorithm!