Which OS? Win 98 or 2000

[faulkner132]

I've got a old Laptop (Pentium 1, 266 Mhz, 144MB RAM) which I need to re-purpose since the "faster" laptop we had died.

Basically the machine is just going to be used for the Internet and perhaps light editing Word/Excel documents. That said, which would be the better choice of OS?

Windows 98 SE?
Windows 2000?
(Linux is not an option as the laptop is for my wife)

I'm definitely going to use Firefox and the machine barely meets the requirements anyway. I know it's going to be slow.

Suggestions?

I would use 2000 because I think it is still supported by Microsoft, support for all 98 versions ended June/July 2006 time frame.

[TwoRails]

I'm partial to Win98.2, but I have to admit I've never run 2K. Whenever I build my next spare parts build, I'll be putting 98.2 on it.

[glc]

Win2000 will be a LOT easier to install due to driver issues and easier resource sharing. However, it will be considerably slower than Win98SE.

I have Win2000 on a P1-233 MMX laptop with 128mb ram and a 4 gig hard drive. It's solid and stable, but painfully slow.

[plumerjr]

I would go with 2000 Pro because it's a solid OS which I've had very few problems with. Since XP is based on 2k Pro almost anything that'll run with XP will work with it. I've been using it for a few years now on an older machine which has been a solid performer despite being obsolete by todays standards. 98se is nice and performed well but still I'd go with 2k Pro.

[glfredrick]

Still running a bunch of 2000 machines where I work... I prefer it to 98 for almost everything.