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XP replacement for aging laptops

Joined
Dec 6, 2005
Messages
10,881 (1.62/day)
Location
Manchester, NH
System Name Senile
Processor I7-4790K@4.8 GHz 24/7
Motherboard MSI Z97-G45 Gaming
Cooling Be Quiet Pure Rock Air
Memory 16GB 4x4 G.Skill CAS9 2133 Sniper
Video Card(s) GIGABYTE Vega 64
Storage Samsung EVO 500GB / 8 Different WDs / QNAP TS-253 8GB NAS with 2x10Tb WD Blue
Display(s) 34" LG 34CB88-P 21:9 Curved UltraWide QHD (3440*1440) *FREE_SYNC*
Case Rosewill
Audio Device(s) Onboard + HD HDMI
Power Supply Corsair HX750
Mouse Logitech G5
Keyboard Corsair Strafe RGB & G610 Orion Red
Software Win 10
The Dell is pretty much dust. For the cost of an OS, you might want to consider a used laptop off Craigslist or eBay with 7 installed.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
2,361 (0.48/day)
Location
Marlow, ENGLAND
System Name Chachamaru-IV | Retro Battlestation
Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900X | Intel Pentium II 450MHz
Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX X570-F Gaming | MSI MS-6116 (Intel 440BX chipset)
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4
Memory 32GB Corsair DDR4-3000 (16-20-20-38) | 512MB PC133 SDRAM
Video Card(s) nVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 FE | 3dfx Voodoo3 3000
Storage 1TB WD_Black SN850 NVME SSD (OS), Toshiba 3TB (Storage), Toshiba 3TB (Steam)
Display(s) Samsung Odyssey G5 27" @ 1440p144 & Dell P2312H @ 1080p60
Case SilverStone Seta A1 | Beige box
Audio Device(s) Creative Sound Blaster AE-7 (Speakers), Creative Zen Hybrid headset | Sound Blaster AWE64
Power Supply EVGA Supernova 750 G2 | 250W ASETEC
Mouse Roccat Kone Air| Microsoft Serial Mouse v2.0A
Keyboard Vortex Race3 | Dell AT102W
Software Microsoft Windows 11 Pro | Microsoft Windows 98SE
I'm not paying for any of these OSes, I have a TechNet subscription.

I've done some tests in VirtualBox of Vista Basic, 7 Starter and 7 Basic. RAM was set to 768MB and it's running on one core only. Of the three, 7 Starter booted the fastest, with Vista Basic being the slowest (no surprises there). However, for RAM usage 7 Starter and Vista Basic are tied for the lowest (idling at around 300-500MB), with 7 Basic idling sometimes between them, sometimes more then them (usually 150MB or so more).
 
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