on Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 09:30:29AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 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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