So I Got This High-end Laptop.

[Alex.]

Today I bought the king of all systems, a 700Mhz Pentium III laptop, with a 12GB harddrive and 1024x768 screen resolution, running Windows '98 (it has one USB port and a DVD-drive though!). Its main tasks will be taking notes during lectures and compiling GP2X games and other small C and Java programs.

What I want to do now though is get the most out of it, as is. I already installed NFS 3, which sadly doesn't run on XP, and plan to do the same with a load of other games I have lying around from when I was a little lad. Anyone else know how one could have a good time with a '98 machine?

But what should I do with it next? I put a Ubuntu Live CD in it to see how it behaves, and it's very slow. I know that most of its slowness comes from the CD, but I assume it wouldn't be pretty to look at every day regardless. I read on Microsoft's website that the machine meets the minimum requirements to run Windows XP Professional: I wonder if it would run decent with the retro-feel and all shadows/fades disabled. Its attrractive points include support for my favourite IDEs and its USB drivers.

So please tell me how I should mistreat this bugger. It has it coming.

- Alex

 

[TelcoLou]

Try to get 3D Studio Max to run on it.

(I'm not kidding either ... we had a 133 Pentium running Win95 and I rendered a really nice forest scene in 'Max ... took all night into the next day, but yeah )

 

[speedmike]

Try and make your laptop as monochrome as possible. That is always fun! This is what my Win Xp desktop.
I did this because I missed my mac classic II at my parents house.

AND PLAY CnC GOLD, but you already knew that...

 

[TrickyPhillips]

I put a Ubuntu Live CD in it to see how it behaves, and it's very slow. I know that most of its slowness comes from the CD, but I assume it wouldn't be pretty to look at every day regardless.

Don't let the live CD + crappy default theme put you off. Ubuntu is a really nice desktop distribution, once you've customized Gnome to your liking. I use it as my main operating system, on my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2517/screenshot1pk9.png

 

[Epicenter]

Start smaller and use Debian, build up from a minimalistic install. Don't use things like KDE or Gnome. For speed, stick with simpler window managers.

 

[nickspoon]

Try Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu (XFCE and Fluxbox, respectively). They run a lot faster than other window managers.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Why not give Deli Linux a go?

 

[Fishbong]

Try and make your laptop as monochrome as possible. That is always fun! This is what my Win Xp desktop.
I did this because I missed my mac classic II at my parents house.

AND PLAY CnC GOLD, but you already knew that...

This looks great! Where did you gt that Wallpaper? And the icons?

 

[evol]

Vectorlinux flies on my 300mhz PII so on your box it would be rockin its based of slackware and really easy to install/conf
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

the only distro that is faster on my lappy is archlinux but it also is harder to conf vim for the win in all cases

 

[craigix]

I put a Ubuntu Live CD in it to see how it behaves, and it's very slow. I know that most of its slowness comes from the CD, but I assume it wouldn't be pretty to look at every day regardless.

Don't let the live CD + crappy default theme put you off. Ubuntu is a really nice desktop distribution, once you've customized Gnome to your liking. I use it as my main operating system, on my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2517/screenshot1pk9.png

Awesome laptop resolution there, I have the 8200 which is slightly lower res, how is the performance? I assume can now have 2 full sized windows open next to each other and have a sort of dual display on one screen thing going on?

 

[Steve-O]

the slowness from the live cd is probably to do with your drive... older laptops seem to have slow read speeds. Plus how much Ram do you have?

 

[Alex.]

The beast has 128MB of RAM. I won't ever upgrade it, either, I want the deal to stay cheap. The only investment I'll put into it will be a cheap USB mouse.

I'm downloading the .iso for Vector Linux SOHO 5.1, it's a very attractive OS. Too bad there's no easy setup for a GP2X dev environment like on Windows. keep in mind the machine has no internet connection, so downloading-installers aren't an option really

I put NFS Porsche (4) and it runs surprisingly well on the lowest quality. This thing rocks, I'll post some photos later on today

- Alex

 

[speedmike]

Try and make your laptop as monochrome as possible. That is always fun! This is what my Win Xp desktop.
I did this because I missed my mac classic II at my parents house.

AND PLAY CnC GOLD, but you already knew that...

This looks great! Where did you gt that Wallpaper? And the icons?

The wallpaper is a sketch from some Steel battalion website and the icons are from all over.

I had a PIII 733 desktop w/ 128 ram and it ran and installed Ubuntu linux fine. It was a little slower, but not too bad at all.

 

[TrickyPhillips]

I put a Ubuntu Live CD in it to see how it behaves, and it's very slow. I know that most of its slowness comes from the CD, but I assume it wouldn't be pretty to look at every day regardless.

Don't let the live CD + crappy default theme put you off. Ubuntu is a really nice desktop distribution, once you've customized Gnome to your liking. I use it as my main operating system, on my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2517/screenshot1pk9.png

Awesome laptop resolution there, I have the 8200 which is slightly lower res, how is the performance? I assume can now have 2 full sized windows open next to each other and have a sort of dual display on one screen thing going on?

I mainly use it for school, programming/web development and for a bit of low-end gaming. I upgraded to the 128MB ATI graphics card, so it has no trouble running ZSNES and such.

I'm really in love with the 1920x1200 resolution. With the way I use my computers, I can never be satisfied with the amount of screen space I have, though. I often finding myself switching to virtual desktops in Gnome just to have my application windows neatly organized the way I like. :lol:

 

[Alex.]

Well, here's my first problem: from what I've read Codeblocks seems to like Windows 98, but my SD card reader doesn't. I bought this one, and on its packaging it says it supports Windows 98/SE.

The driver Windows asks for is 'Mass Storage Device', but I haven't been able to find anything on Google. Any help here would be much appreciated, as I'd hate to install XP just for a generic driver.

- Alex

Edit: This worked wonders. I'll install Codeblocks and DevKitGP2X tonight, and see if Airplyr compiles

Edit 2: It now compiles .gpe's, say hello to my dedicated GP2X dev machine!

 

[Rico]

Try to get Mac OSX86 to work on it

 

[speedmike]

Try to get Mac OSX86 to work on it

That isn't possible on a PIII

 

[Alex.]

Try to get Mac OSX86 to work on it

That isn't possible on a PIII

Hence the "try".

- Alex

 

[Aninhumer]

I would think a good, lightish linux distro with xfce or fluxbox would run okay.
(My preference is xfce, which can easily look better than GNOME)

BTW, I seem to remember Vector linux was optimised compiled, I think for 586 though, so you should be fine. Or was that Arch linux? :huh:

Of course if you're feeling really geeky don't even bother with that cumbersome desktop environment

 

[evol]

Archlinux = i686
Vectorlinux = i586