Oooold Dell latitude

Hey guys, first post on the site, hope to have a good time here.

Anyway, Ive got a really old Dell Latitude CS circa 1998.
Here is Dell's page on it: http://support.ap.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pmac2cm/en/en_ug/specs.htm

Ive had it for a long time now, and just recently dug it up from waaay back from my closet.

Long question short, is this thing still useful to use? The battery still charges, Windows98SE still runs decently (some blue-screens at startup now and then), and i have actually been able to (slowly) surf the internet using LAN. I can even watch youtube, albeit in 5 FPS-like jitteryness.

My father has a copy of WinXP SP1 which he never really used, so i was thinking of clean-installing that onto this Dell. But I see three problems.
1) Its Windows XP Service Pack 1,
2) Its actually an upgrade XP CD,
3) Im not sure if this thing can run XP any smoother then it can 98.

What would you guys personally do? Ive thought about Linux, and that actually might be the only thing left thats viable besides trashing this thing.

Any advice is greatly appriciated.

 

Until I got my new E6500, I was using an old Compaq Presario laptop from the late 90s, and using XP just fine on it. I used TinyXP and I had to turn off all the eyecandy, all the extras like System Restore and a lot of the background service stuff. But it worked fine for my needs, which were basic audio editing and recording, word processing, and basic e-mail and Web surfing-- it wouldn't handle most video or Flash, though.

 

If you install XP over 98, you might get 6FPS on YouTube. Or you might get 4FPS.

Not much you can really do with this one.

 

Hmm, that TinyXP sounds veeery interesting actually. I might give that a shot. Thanks for the help.

Aww man, so i guess anything NT is out of the question. Thank you for the quick response.


Though i still might try out TinyXP just for the helluvit. And i still have a soft spot for this old thing, served me well with playing Star Trek Armada, and the nights of surfing dial-up.

 

There's nothing wrong with trying. You might learn something or figure out a good way to put it to use.

 

XP is lighter than you might think it is.

I've got a CPX sitting around, 500MHz P3, 256MB, with a full XP Pro SP3 install on it and it runs alright. You can browse with one or tabs, and play some solitaire, but that's about it. Not terribly convenient in the end; you're probably better off just pawning it off on eBay. You can get over $100 if it's in good shape.

 

You can also turn it into a Linux machine, also for the sake of it.