For a long time now I've had an old laptop lying around unused.

It used to have Windows XP on it, until I went and installed a couple of Linux systems on separate partitions of the main drive (by mistake) instead of replacing the current installation. The system started getting incredibly slow and rich in errors and ultimately I could no longer boot up any one of the operating systems I had installed, so I stashed the laptop away and there it has been, stashed away, until now.

The old laptop I'm speaking about is a metallic Compaq Armada M300, a little seemingly very robust gadget that's surprisingly energetic for its age. It used to function as an office computer for my dad, until the company gave him a newer model, and it fell into my hands when the old Macintosh (system 7, now 15 years old) I had been using suddenly became very outdated very fast. With this new portable machine I could browse the net, play resource-heavy (at this time) 3D FPS games, driving games, play music & do all sorts of entertaining things. Eventually a stationary computer was bought and this old spectacle found peace in a dusty closet. Until that time when I picked it up again and decided to try out Linux on it. Big mistake.

Apparently I reinstalled Windows XP on it, successfully, some time after that, because when I booted it up today, that's the OS it was running. It was, however, not the OS I wanted, so I burned Killdisc (free program that lets you purge all data from a computer of choice) to a CD and got rid of everything to make way for a clean install. I think there were still some remnants from the different Linux variations I had installed earlier since the drive was, before it was purged, divided up into a myriad of strange partitions. Killdisc cleaned up the mess quickly.

I rebooted with a brand new copy of Slax, a free resource-light linux system of which you can handpick components or modules as they call them (games, programs, programming languages, etc) before creating an img file out of everything, downloading it, burning it and installing it. Only problem was, it didn't install, it turns out the OS could run straight from the CD (which it did very well I should add). I went online to search for installation instructions, but for a lazy... err, crazily efficient individual like me they were way to complicated and time-consuming so I dismissed the project.

Instead I chose to install Windows 98. Reason being: there are quite a few old games I'd love to play that neither Windows XP or Windows 7 support. In fact, Windows 7 supports pretty much everything Windows XP did, so I chose to install something older. I have a Windows 95 floppy lying around, but that felt a bit overkill in the retroretro scale... I've never even used Windows 95. Unless I stumble upon another cheap computer I can install it on just to try it out, I probably never will either.

Windows 98 installed nicely, seemingly without problems. The procedure took a long time (about 2 hours), and as I was typing this the estimated time renaming was 21 minutes, with the file copy procedure already up at 99%. Turns out there were only a few seconds remaining though, because now it's all done! Oh wait, turns out I have to manually install a CD drivers before installing all other drivers, as that would lead to me not being able to access the installation disc after installation. I think I suddenly realized why people prefer newer Windows versions over the older ones. I'll persevere though, and tell you all about how everything goes when everything has gone.. hopefully well. :)

Later.