_real_ system requirements for XP

[ka]

hi --

our office will be upgrading the desktop OS from NT 4.0 to XP within a year. I'm looking at our PC inventory and we've got about 30+ machines that are pentium II 400Mz and just out of their Dell 3 year warranty. I'm not too bothered about being out of serive warranty, but I was wondering how a PII 400Mz (128 megs ram) will really hold up on XP? Any thoughts from XP users, ideally in an office environment?

cheers

 

[fluteplr]

IMHO you will need more ram at least 256mg. I have not had any experience with running XP on a PII but it would probably be fine if you turned off some of the special visual effects like the menu fade etc.

 

[cdogg]

Yeah, if you revert to the classic desktop and turn off some added features, it should run "well enough" on a PII 400. I agree with fluteplr though that you should heavily consider upgrading to at least 256MB RAM (512MB has been shown in many tests to be XP's sweet spot).

I personally don't recommend XP on machines that are slower than a PIII 600MHz, if they want all the normal features turned on (tons of procs eat resources in the background)...

ck_blk@yahoo.com

 

[wolluf]

The PII 400's will run ok - but not as quickly as under NT (as suggested, better if you turn all the gubbins off).
PS. Why bother upgrading such machines? (is there a particular feature of XP you need?) Its a lot of work - hope you get equivalent benefit!

 

[mikecx]

I have heard stories of it working "ok" on pentium 100 with 64 megs of ram. Disable everything unnecesarry, drop your resolution and colors and try not to run too much at one time and the 400's should work fine. I have a 500mhz at home and it is not noticably slower than a 900mhz i also have.

 

[Kspade]

I have an aquantance who runs it on a 330Mhs w/ 128 with all visual effects enables and it runs decent, no serious slowdows or laggs or even crashes. the PII 400's should be ok as is, but upgrading ram is always reccomended for machines at or below 128 Mb I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every moment of it.