Laptop OS recomendations
 

I just picked up an old P3 laptop that will be my dedicated MS laptop. It came with Win98 on it. I was tired off toting my nice laptop out to the garage.

What do you recommend for running MT and MLV?

Should I install 2000/XP or just leave it run on 98? I want something that I am not going to have to wait all day for it to load. Simpler the better.

Win 98 should be just fine. 2000 or XP might slow things down a bit.

If it has a lot of ram, sometimes XP actually boots faster (without logins) or maybe it just seems to.

what he said....you can also use nlite to make a stripped down xp install.

The only problem with Windows 98 (SE & ME) is that they self corrupt over time. So you should atleast format the HD and re-install (if not already done) or upgrade to 2000 (NT).

XP will use far to much RAM on a old laptop (I think min RAM recommended is 156) and it will be running very slow.

Is linux an option? megatunix is a pretty nice program

I should do that. Good idea.

Strip Win98 down.. its fast and small.

http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

A stripped 98 on a P3 can boot in roughly 20 seconds.

I gotta side with the Win2k folks here. My tuning tablet is an old P3 with 128mb and it's been running Windows 2000 just fine, originally with EMU and now with MegaTune. Even if you've only got 64mb I'd still give it a try.

Windows 2000 and XP are more stable than Windows98. I'd run XP and call it a day.

Install XP with all the unnecessary junk stripped out and services disabled. It will run faster then 2k, and 98 with the same amount of ram. NTFS > *. That or *nix, ubuntu would be a good call.

totally xp is more stable. and still supported at least minimally. at least until you install the genuine validation what-mo-bob and invalidate your pirated warez.

No more genuine validation nag, microsoft got their ass handed to them for that one. It may not be allowed to update, but they cant install a nag screen on your computer without your permission.

Besides, if updating is really a concern I can think of at least 3 ways to update a bootleg XP.

Things might have changed, though I doubt it. Megatunix doesn't have an autotune feature, so keep that in mind. The application looks great and their gauge assembly is awesome compared to megatune.

Any screen shots?

http://megatunix.sourceforge.net/

Look for yourself. There are videos and images also on google.

I have an old Thinkpad P-II 300 Mhz with 128 mb ram for tuning purposes running on Windows ME. I installed megatune without any issues and even MLV with some difficulty. Cant notice any differene in megatune speed between that and my regular laptop which is like 2 GB ram. MLV runs a little slower though.

Bootup time is around 30 seconds. It shuts down even faster than my regular laptop.

I'm all for more of us jumping on Megatunix, no autotune is a little bit of a bummer, but with more people using it i'm sure there'd be a consideration for it to be worked in.

I have an old ass Compaq Presario 1200. I'm running Xubuntu because it's extremely lite and it runs just fine I find.

Windows 2000. Quick on slower systems and MUCH more stable then '98. It can also run quickly on 256mb ram. XP is too bloated in general and overkill for ecu programing.