I posted this in the windows nt forum but no one seemed to answer so i though i would ask this here. which version of windows would you recomend for an ibm thinkpad 760el. its a pentium 166, 16 megs of ram. i mainly want to use it as a portable mp3 player. right now i have windows 3.1 on it. windows 3.11 works good but i would like to try another version of windows but want to know which one is worth trying. i have the following versions of windows available for it: windows for workgroups 3.11, windows nt 3.1, windows nt 3.51, or os/2 2.1 . which one would be good to try? ive been wanting to try os/2 but is os/2 2.1 a good version, will it be able to play my mp3s?

In your case i'd recommend Win 95b. You'll get nearly all the benefits of any win 32 OSs without the load. 16 megs of ram may be cutting it a little low however/ In any case, get Winamp if you want to play M3s, you won't be disapoittwed! HTH Lightspeed.

I came across a webpage about a DOS MP3 system for a guy to use in his car. Quick booting and reliable. Win95b with 16MB RAM can be a miserable experience, not even capable of playing a WAV smoothly with Sound Recorder. My main laptop is now a P120 and thanks to auction sites I've been able to increase the RAM first to 40MB and now 80MB. I've also got a spare hard drive and caddy for Win3.11 and am contemplating W98 on the main drive because there's some software which definitely won't install on W95 :-( As well as keeping an eye open for more RAM, for MP3s you'll probably want a bigger and faster hard drive. There are plenty of used IBM Travelstar HDDs about, but I've found them unreliable, so now have a Fujitsu, bought new. 20GB seems crazy when for years I've only had 10MB free, but that drive will soon be out of date. I hope it will last me 5 - 10 years. For an older BIOS you need to divide the drive up with OnTrack Disk Manager.

Jake - Could I have the site address regarding the DOS - MP3 setup. You can send it via e-mail if desired. Thanks don@kansasphotos.net

To Old Jake: If you do have to go with Windows 98, you may want to try adding the free version of 98 Lite. (www.98lite.net) That will make 98 nearly as fast as 95 (by removing IE integration) while still being compatible with anything the needs Windows 98.

Don: a Google search for +dos +mp3 +car returned plenty of hits, but this site was the one I was looking at a while ago. Thank you, PCF, for the reminder about 98 Lite. It'll be interesting to see if I can install the other apps after it's done its stuff.

Yes, Win98+98lite+ a few bugfixes or "service packs" (ohhh Micro$oft) 98lite & win98 is, mainly, win98 without internet explorer, but who need this s**t? (www.opera.com) It's only my opinion, because i think you will do more than only listen music. But if you ONLY want it for a "portable player", look at www.opus.com.tt/dave/ for a MP3 player, you will save LOOOOOTS of megabytes ;).