I was thinking of installing NT 4 Workstation on my (old) laptop. I'll set it up as a dual-boot system with Win98. The major reason I am considering NT 4 is price, because of the fact that this laptop is 4+ years old. A few people I've mentioned this to have basically said "don't bother with NT 4, just go with Windows 2000." Well, W2K costs quite a bit more, and I can't see spending that kind of money on an old laptop. Is it really a waste of time to bother with NT 4? I'd like to put an OS on this laptop that's more stable than Windows 98 SE. OTOH, this install of Win98 that I'm using is a lot better than some others that I've had the displeasure of using. -Phil

NT 4 is a great OS...in certain places. It's (unfortunately) not a good laptop OS. Windows 2000 Pro is (I happen to be a big fan of 2k). NT is much more stable than 98, but it's missing a lot of cool features, such as good gaming capability, power management (essential for laptops), and it's designed more of a client/server networked environment. Windows 2000 makes up for a lot of this, it's still geared well toward client/server, but it has power management and works (a bit) better with games. However, 2000 requires a fast processor and a LOT of RAM, so I wouldn't recommend putting it on an old laptop (maybe if you give me some specs. on the laptop, I can make a better recommendation). Mostly, for laptops, I would just say stick with 98 SE...probably your best choice unless you have a fast one. -Ken

Hi Ken, Oh well, I seem to remember coming to the same conclusion about NT months ago, but I guess I forgot. The laptop is a 300 MHz Pentium II with 64 MB of RAM. A friend told me that W2K will work fine on it, especially if I put some more memory in it. Like 64 MB more, for a total of 128 MB of RAM. -Phil

NT4 is definitely still worthwhile! You are right about NT4 being stable. Windows 98-crashes-a-week isn't, and Windows 95 is no better and Windows ME is worse. I refuse to install Win9x/ME on ANY computer except as a very last resort. Plus, NT is fine for laptops - it was even touted by MS as being great for laptops. The only difference is, you just need to keep your eye on the battery meter and shut down in plenty of time (even though I've never found NT to mind the odd sudden powerdown). Standby can be a pain in the neck anyway 'cause not all laptops are good at leaving standby mode (mine is a good example). Plus, NT is fast. 98 isn't and can't cope with large memory allocations (more than 512MB). Nor is 2000 on less than 96MB RAM (though it is acceptable on 64MB or 32 if you are lucky). I'd suggest keeping your NT installation and replacing 98 with 2000. That way, you can use Windows NT for most things because of its speed, and use 2000 for any software that NT won't run.

2k won't run usably on 64MB RAM (especially with a 300mhz processor). Will be ok on 128, as long as you don't run too many apps at once. Same can be said of NT at 64MB - NT should be absolutely fine at 128MB. I wouldn't install 9x/ME on any machine I needed to work - so as long as NT supports what you need (eg, NO USB), its a reasonable choice for older notebook. If you do go that route, make sure you install SP6a & visit Windows Update for all the patches.

I agree about NT4 being suitable - The only thing is MS is dumping support with it starting with the newest version of MSN messenger (Which really annoyed me! im trying to find a way to install it under NT)

Mike, Why not just dump MSN Messenger and go with Trillian or Miranda? Trillian http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/trillian/index.html Miranda IM http://miranda-icq.sourceforge.net/ Actually, I wouldn't totally dump MSN Messenger. Leave your current version installed so you can fall back to it if you ever need to. -Phil