If you've got less than 256 MB RAM, WinXP will be slow. If you've got less than 128 MB RAM, Win2000 will be slow. About Linux: I once tried Suse 7.1 on an old Compaq Deskpro(Pentium I 166 Mhz, 48 MB RAM, 3 GB disk, S3TrioV2 PCI graphics card). Never again. I never had an OS that was THAT slow. And it couldn't work with the S3Trio graphics chip, which was one of the standard controllers back then. WinNT 4.0 Server (domain controller + SQL server + IIS + file/print server + Exchange server) ran much faster on that rig. Not getting a WinNT based OS stable on a machine only happened once to me (and I've installed literally hundreds of machines). A rather exotic combination of a Cyrix CPU and some unknown chipset manufacturer on an extremely cheap machine wouldn't work with NT4 (we're talking 1999). Had to revert to Win98 - with all the inherent stability issues of that (rather lousy) OS. By the way, if you want to have a fast running XP, turn off all the visual goodies and make sure you have at least 256 MB of RAM. Norton AV and McAfee AV are also (in)famous for slowing down machines, I prefer AVG or PC-Cillin.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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