on Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 09:30:29AM -0500, destruss@iowatelecom.net (destruss@iowatelecom.net) wrote:
> Hi all:
> anchordesk ran a story that ms is still considering win3.1 as their
> property and not to be used even for donated computers for charity
> (see the article:
> http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2800646,0
> 0.html)
> My question is what should be included on a computer that is
> being donated to give a new user experience and use of an old 386
> or more? Dean
Define "new user experience".
386/486 I'd mostly relegate to server activities (firewall, gateway,
file/print, mail, light web), or use as an X terminal, probably with
video and network card upgrades.
Pentium would be entry-level workstation candidate, but you're not
going to have happy campers running KDE/GNOME, Mozilla, or
StarOffice, that bloated stuck pig of an office suite. AbiWord,
Gnumeric, and Sylpheed might make for good word processing,
spreadsheet, and mail apps. Browsers are a bit more difficult, the
new ones are *all* big. Netscape 3.0x, Konqueror, or Skipstone, in
the free category. Possibly Opera in non-free. If you can sell
users on console apps, options are far more open: vim, emacs, sc,
mutt, w3m, links.
PII/PIII at 300 MHz or better is getting to reasonable full-feature
(if not high-end) workstation. Current memory is damned cheap, and
well worth the price.
Note that memory makes a huge difference in apparent speed and response,
and that memory for older systems is getting *more* expensive as stocks
are depleted. They ain't makin' that stuff no mo'.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Free Dmitry!! Boycott Adobe!! Repeal the DMCA!! http://www.freesklyarov.org
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