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programmes that use little system resources.

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f0dder:
Firefox for a machine with 64meg ram is a definite no-go unless you're a masochist. On the other hand, there shouldn't be any reason to go as minimalistic as dIE - standard IE was fine on pmmx-200/64meg. However, standard IE is way too unsafe and featureless, hence the IE-based Avant or Maxthon. Haven't tried Maxthon myself, but Avant was pretty lightweight, had popupblocker, tabs, etc.

Even when removing unnecessary plugins, acrobat reader v6 is still slow on old machines. Really, do try to get a copy of v5.

Of course that's just my observations from when I was stuck with that pmmx-200 box for a couple of months, and my demands on speed might be higher than most people... since they tend to look weirdly at me when I saw firefox, openoffice etc. are slow and bloated :)

tsaint:
How about "off by one" browser for a lightweight free browser?
Have a look at http://offbyone.com/offbyone/

f0dder:
It's a cute little browser, but unless you have *very* basic needs I'm afraid it doesn't cut the cheese - especially the lack of CSS support (try looking at donationcoder.com in it :O).

But a nice little find anyway  :Thmbsup:

JavaJones:
OpenOffice does not use Java for the core, as far as I know. Java is used for macro support and other things, if I recall correctly. You *can* turn off Java use and it speeds up loading time and general use, although I do fine it still slower than it should be. This is the main barrier to me switching everyone in my office to it and that's very frustrating. I don't know of a general office solution that is faster and free, but there have been some good suggestions from others. If formatted text editing is not a necessity than I recommend PSPad as a light but extremely capable general text editor. Although it's not for the faint of heart or novice user.

I actually find Adobe Reader 7 to be faster than almost any previous verson. *Maybe* 5 is faster, but certainly not 6. 7 is slow but the main issue with it is RAM use. If you have enough RAM it's reasonably fast, it's just on lower RAM systems it bogs heavily due to swap file use. In any case Foxit is much better for the majority of uses. I haven't seen it bog down much on more complex PDF's, but I admit I don't read complex PDF's much. Hopefully someone on an old system isn't doing that anyway. :D

For a browser yeah I'd say an IE variant probably would be lowest on resources, but be careful with using a tabbed browser (of any kind) and then opening a lot of tabs. Opera is probably a close 2nd to IE and is actually faster in general operation, but if memory use is the concern it might not be better. It does seem at least comparable to Maxthon, etc. though if you'll be using tabbed browsing and as I said it's faster (measurably so).

Finally, AVG is a good choice for a light AV application. CA eTrust is also available for free and is fairly light, but not as much as AVG I think.

Ultimately you'll probably have to make some sacrifices to get decent functionality with low resource use these days. For example using Wordpad for all document editing - very basic, but hey it works! ;) If this is acceptable then all should be well. Otherwise tell 'em to spend just a couple hundred bucks and upgrade.

- Oshyan

369:
...also wondering about "writing" software....
-tomos (June 09, 2006, 05:02 AM)
--- End quote ---
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