win 95 and connecting to the net

[MARKBLACK]

Hi, a friend has an old panasonic laptop (1996) (don't know the specs) he had windows 95 on it, the drive needed a reinstall so I tried windows 98 on - long story short it was too slow.
He wants to use this machine on the net whilst he is on holidays in germany - he wants me to install windows 95 - is it possible to connect to the internet with windows 95 - if so what extra software do I need to install?

MB

[GaryRouth]

The original version Windows 95 didn't come with Internet Explorer at first. Later releases bundled various versions of IE: notably IE3 came with Windows 95 OSR2 [this version of 95 is listed as 4.00.950B if you look at the General tab in your System applet in Control Panel]. . . If IE is on there, it might do well enough. Old versions of Netscape were popular back then, too.

Assuming that the laptop lacks an Ethernet connector, the fastest connection would be to use a PCMCIA card with an Ethernet connector, and connect from behind a hardware firewall on a friend or family member's network. (This saves the overhead of a firewall -if your friend will be staying with relatives). I'm not sure if there's a wireless PCMCIA card that would run well enough - but I imagine a quick look around would let you know. Security is a hassle with the older machines, since few recent versions support Win95 on skimpy resources, perhaps F-prot can help there, since it can be run manually with acceptable results. Real-time scanning isn't easily practical.

Dial-up just requires a Win95 compatible disk from the ISP (if the laptop has a modem in it . . . and a German-compatible phone adapter). Here's a link with info about connecting to the Internet in Germany http://www.german-way.com/inet.html

Might be easier just to use a loaner at the Internet cafes.

. . . Gary

[edfair]

As Gary says, no IE with earlier versions. But you can find IE in all sorts of places. Modem software used to come with it. Early ISP software came with it until the ISPs started bundling their own software.
I suspect that you will want to load 4.0 at the latest.

[glc]

95 will handle IE up through 5.5, you will need at least 5.0 or an alternative browser to access a LOT of sites these days.

Dialups are set up with dialup networking much like later versions of Windows. Ethernet can be a different story, 95 does not install TCP/IP by default. Wireless is very difficult because there are very few wireless PCMCIA cards that have Win95 drivers available. Winsock needs to be updated to 2.x.