One of my friends has an old 266 mhz computer with 128 mb of ram, that is all they can afford right now. What os do you think that would run the best on their computer Win 98se Win Nt 4.0 Windows 2000 pro, or win xp.

Don't go with Win98SE or WinNT. Go with the newer version of windows. (2000 or XP) They are designed to be more efficient and manager resources better. Which one, well it is a matter of preference really. If it is a really old machine, you may want to go with 2000 because you may have a hard time finding xp compatible drivers. Hope this helps

Thanks for the responce. I will tell them to get 2000 pro because their computer is an older computer.

2K and XP will run slow on a 266Mhz. If your using the PC for web browsing and a bit of old gaming use 98.

If your friend doesn't absolutely have to have Windows, try Suse Linux 8.1 or Redhat 8.0. Both come with a gob of aopplications, so your friend can save money on the OS and other software too. They run pretty stable on the slower hardware. If your friend is a novice, Suse is a good choice because of all of its wizards and setup tools. Both come with Open Office, Mozilla, and Evolution (an outlook clone)in addition to just about every other program you would ever need. Maybe she could then dump her money into some newer hardware. Otherwise I agree with John; use Win 98. Win2k needs 128MB ram just to run, and winXP is resource-hogging spyware. I believe Windows 98 only requires 32 MB ram to run efficiently.

Up until recently I had an AMD K6 266 (o/clocked to 300MHX) with 96MB of RAM acting as a server machine. That all ran perfectly fine with Win98.

'98 runs fine on a P2/233 (+128Meg RAM); W2K-Pro similarly; and even XP-Pro - although it may well be a little slow - not that I'm aware of it! More RAM might be an advantage but for basic/average use 128 should be OK. Main item (if going for W2K) is to run W2K chkupgrd.exe util (on the W2K CD) to vet the system as is for W2K compliance. It generates a report on what is/isn't OK for W2K; after-which secure all required updates before running setup. There is a similar util (somewhere) for XP. If drive is large enough to handle it perhaps set up a dual-boot ('98/W2K) and have the choice of both OS? Post-21665 (#5) on this W2K forum details a way to set it up. If wanting '98/NT then Post-3279 on the NT forum details a safe/simple way to set that up. And if you wanted all three ('98/NT/W2K) - post back; it's simple to achieve and 21665 can be easily modified to the end.