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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
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Comments
I've run it on less. by: General Lee D. Mented on 5/7/2009
I came across a junk laptop that was functional but unwanted as it was way out of date and its battery no longer held a charge. It was a Toshiba Portege 4010 with some upgrades. Specs were an Intel Pentium IIIM 933MHz, 512MB PC100, and a 60GB HD. Unfortunately the graphics were ancient ALi based crap.

However, Windows 7 build 7000 installed just fine and even ran acceptably. Even with only 512MB installed, after startup there would normally be about 300MB free, without having done anything to the default install (disabled services etc). It seems that Win7 is a bit more intelligent when it comes to knowing when to eat resources.

Everything worked fine except the video, but I blame that on the DX7-era integrated chipset. Even the audio drivers managed to get installed and working, Windows 7's automated troubleshooting got most of the XP drivers up and running. But video was a problem. Whenever anything created an overlay surface the machine would lock up. Not bluescreen, just freeze solid. In standard VGA mode, it worked just fine but video playback was a slideshow. Still, it could browse fine, the wireless worked, the sound worked, and it was impressively responsive for a laptop coming up on its 10th birthday that had shipped with Windows 2000.

It looks like 7 is going to have a lower min spec than Vista, much closer to XP.
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