yes, evil horses

Specs

• Manufacturer - Dell Inc.
• Model - Inspiron 2200
• Operating System - Windows XP Professional SP3 (originally XP Home SP2)
• CPU - Intel Pentium M (1.70GHz)
• Graphics - Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset (integrated)
• RAM - 504MB (VRAM - 128MB)
• Display - 1024x768 50Hz (32-bit)
• Storage - 56GB
• Audio - SigmaTel C-Major Audio (STAC9752AT)

Additional Info

I obtained this laptop for $20 at a local antique mall. A budget laptop from 2005, it runs about as well as you would expect. When I got it, it had Windows XP Home Edition SP2 preinstalled, with some loose files left over from the previous owner. It ran slower than molasses. I ended up backing up the hard drive and installing ReactOS to test how well that OS would run on the hardware. Although ReactOS has came a long way in its nearly 30 year+ development history, I was unable to get any drivers set up without the entire system either freezing up or BSODing. Eventually, I gave up and reinstalled XP, this time using Professional Edition SP3.

After updating the drivers (with significantly less headache), I installed the Protoweb and MyPal browsers. Protoweb is a wonderful retro project that holds dynamic copies of websites from the 90s and early 00s. It is a great restoration service if you want to use a period accurate world wide web for your vintage hardware. It also reduces the risk of your computer contracting e-herpes from the lack of security updates. I also installed MyPal, which did run but served to showcase the weak capabilities of the internals. The laptop struggled to use more than one tab at a time, and when changing webpages (even on less intensive websites) it would freeze for seconds at a time. YouTube was especially sluggish, even after installing extensions and userscripts intended to restore the 2009 legacy layout.

Considering these difficulties, I am not exactly sure what the best use case is for this laptop, especially once my IBM Thinkpad T43 arrives in the mail. If it is any consolation, I was able to get Half-Life running on it. This laptop is the first vintage that I acquired, and it was more of an impulse purchase upon seeing the novelty of an XP machine being sold for cheap. It helped that the antique mall I went to usually does not have electronics so I figured I would take my chances while it was there. I think in the future I will use it as a low-end benchmark when I am testing my PC-ROM games.

Benchmarks