Windows 95 on a Crappy Laptop!
My Laptop Saga Continues...
September, 1999: I got my first (gasp!) 486 laptop!
It had a (gasp!) COLOR SCREEN. (I've really arrived - a COLOR screen. Wow.) It runs Windows 95, (albeit slowly) so I have included some older Windows 95 software links on this page, and have provided a few programs on this site for you to download.
November 2000:
The previous 486 laptop took a dirt nap. It was a good and faithful laptop. (Just so you know: It is not a good thing to take your laptop in and out of the cold, and turn it on right away. This thing called "condensation" happens, doing very bad things to the insides of your laptop!)So, with the demise of my first 486 laptop, I bought another little 386 crappy laptop. I never liked it much, so I sold it on eBay. Later on, I got another crappy 486 laptop. It is a Mighty-Fine laptop, even though (of course) it is still a crappy laptop. It is an IBM Thinkpad, running Windows 95. It has a 500 meg HD, and 20 megs of RAM, and a 75 MHz 486 processor. I am finding that there is a lot you can do with a crappy laptop, if you have a decent amount of RAM. Considering it's a crappy laptop, it has no trouble running Napster. I also can make and edit web pages with HomeSite 3. This is an older version of Homesite (I currently use version 5 on the "big" PC) but version 3 is still pretty nice, and will run on a 486! You should be able to find a copy of Homesite 3 for sale on eBay.
WHAT NEXT?!? January, 2001:
Right after I buy my Mighty-Fine 486 Thinkpad, a friend of mine offered me a great deal on a (ooh!) Pentium laptop. It's a 100 MHz Pentium, with - sound!!! It is currently running Windows 95, has 16 megs of RAM, and an 800 meg Hard Drive. It is a Mighty Fine laptop. Does that mean I'll still be using a crappy laptop? I have a Pentium now! Well, I won't personally think of it as crappy, but since there are 800 MHz to 1 GB MHz PCs out there, it is not the latest and greatest. I am really enjoying downloading and playing MP3s on it, and surfing the web, etc. It can't always run all of the most recent software, however.One thing I am enjoying is learning Photoshop 4 on it. The latest version of Photoshop (version 6) will not run on this laptop, but Adobe's older version of Photoshop LE 5 will. Quite nicely, I might add. I am really enjoying using these versions of Photoshop on my latest laptop.
NOW WHAT?!? August 2001:
Well, right on schedule, my Mighty Fine Pentium laptop bit the dust. About a month ago. It looks like the hard drive died. Just went belly-up one day! I am now on the market for another crappy laptop. I may get a Powerbook this next time! (Hey, I'm cross-platform!) If I do, I guess I will have to create a "Crappy Powerbook Page", won't I?
A belated update: August 2004:
I realized with some guilt that I'd woefully neglected these pages. So I wanted to give my latest updates on my laptop sagas.
First off, I got a little Powerbook. It's really a fine little Powerbook (though of course it is crappy), but it is a pre-PowerPC (not even a PowerMac—that's old). It runs OS 8.1. It's been languishing in my car, as I don't need to use it right now. I hope it still works. (I've got some nice G4 desktops so it isn't as if I'm lacking in the Mac department.)
I also bought a Pentium 166 IMB Thinkpad on eBay last Fall. Unfortunately, with my sterling luck with laptops, it never would work right. It had been running some version of Linux but the seller had supposedly scraped Linux off of the hard drive and I was going to install Windows. But it wouldn't go for it. The removable CD drive was broken in some way.
I figured that my own cluelessness was somehow to blame for my inability to get my latest crappy laptop to function, so I took it into a shop in hopes that they could fix it. But alas, it was not to be. The shop said that they got to a certain point when installing Windows (I was going to install Windows 98) but it was damaged in some way and it would never take the installation. It was just messed up from the start. I was ripped off, obviously. I'm such a sucker. This wasn't merely a crappy laptop, it was a broken crappy laptop. Not good.
I'm currently looking for a new vict—errrr, a new laptop. I browse around eBay (will I never learn!?!) but so far have resisted. But you never know. Any day now . . .
Windows 95 software downloads:
I am still finding that there is a challenge in finding software that will comfortably run on these older Win95 computers.One of my favorite HTML editing programs is Macromedia's Homesite. I am currently using version #4.5, which is excellent. However, I found the freeware version of Homesite a while back (version 1.2) and so I am including it for download on my site. It ran nicely on the old 486 laptop with the pokey 25 MHz processor. I'm not sure how much RAM this program would require, but this particular 486 laptop had 24 megs of RAM, which seems to help a lot in performance. If you like the freeware version of this program, you can buy the most recent version. (Homesite keeps on getting better and better!) Homesite 4.5 will run nicely on a more powerful PC, if you have one!
One of the first things I put on my crappy 486 laptop was EditPad. (The full URL for Edit Pad is: http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadclassic.html.) This is a fabulous, small program that is an excellent replacement for Notepad, and it has added features that Notepad does not. I have put it on every Win9x computer I've owned, and I edited some of this web page with it. It runs well and reasonably fast on a crappy 486 laptop, and is a quick download. Best of all, it is postcardware! Click on Editpad's link to find out what that means, and to download yourself a copy of this great little program...
I was looking for a less power-hungry graphics program for my crappy 486. I realized that Jasc's PaintShop Pro 3.x would be a good choice. I got it from CNET's Download.com, but I cannot find it there anymore. Bear in mind, PaintShop Pro is shareware - you'll eventually have to pay for it if you want to keep it. Currently, the Win9x version of PaintShop Pro is up to version 8 - so the Win3x version is definitely older, and less sophisticated. (But it runs fine on an old, crappy computer!) Paint Shop Pro is an excellent choice for graphics software - even an older version!
If you have at least a Pentium with 16 megs of RAM, you can run Photoshop 5 LE, an older version of the "Lite" Photoshop (currently Adobe has a product called Photoshop Elements). Look for it on eBay. If you have a 486 with 16 megs of RAM, you can run Photoshop 4. Or - a 486 with at least 12 megs of RAM will run Paint Shop Pro 5. These are older versions of excellent graphics software, but they still have a lot to offer! You can probably find these programs for sale on places like eBay. Photoshop LE and Paint Shop Pro are reasonably (relatively) priced, however, even an old version of Photoshop will cost you some bucks.
