Operating system recommendation? PIII Celeron

[Ilander]

Hey, you all...I've got a PIII celeron system, (766 MHz) with a Radeon 9250 and 384 MB of RAM...and I'd like to keep this thing going for a while, actually. Productively going. Like, running Office 97, browsing the web, etc.

It has Windows 98 on it right now (it originally ran ME, and someone "upgraded" it). I've decided Windows lacks features that I'm sorely missing (at least now, before I have it connnected to the internet), features like USB drive support which Windows ME did have.

Well...really, I'm just not happy with 98 on it. So, I figure I have a few options here:

1)Windows ME, which isn't too expensive if I wanted to buy it off ebay.
2)Windows 2000, which supports (for sure) newer software, as Microsoft is still supporting it.
3)Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (Windows FLP)

What I think would be best is #3, but it doesn't seem easy to get...can you really only get it as a corporate OS?

If not, is 2000 much better than ME? I imagine it manages memory better, but that's easily remedied with third party software like Memturbo. Any needed support that I won't find without using Windows 2000?

 

[badge]

I installed Windows XP home 'upgrade' on top of Windows 98 SP2 on a Pentum III 450 mhz. system and it works flawlessly. Just stick the xp upgrade disk in and run it (install) from Win 98 desktop and in a few minutes you are running XP. You don't even have to reinstall MB drivers with the upgrade. HTH.

 

[tnsenthil]

I have installed XP with SP2 on a celeron 700Mhz with 128MB and this works perfectly for Internet / Skype and messengers. A PIII with 384 MB RAM is very good for normal usage.

 

[lolitha]

Windows XP works great on my old comp ,which has 128 MB ram and 600 mhz PIII, it works as a new one in office application boot up is also fast...

 

[lolitha]

Windows XP baby works well in Ma PIII 128 MB Ram with onboard gfx