Hi,

I have recently been gifted a Compaq M300.  It's super thin and light but
only a PIII 600MHz machine, I plan to put the max memory in it (I think
128+256MB) to improve things as much as possible. Also plan to increase HDD
to about 30GB (any problems with doing this/ will partioning make it
faster?).

I typically will only have 1 major app (ie Word or excel) open at one time
so the computer has most resources available to run apps as fast as
possible.  I don't want to run WinXP or other bloatware that will slow it
down to a crawl. My pet peeve it waiting for apps to start-up (including
windows so if anyone has any good tips please let me know also).  I plan to
do a fresh install of Win 98 SE, so with all that in mind, does anyone have
any comments on:

?1 Are all Win98 SE's the same or is/was there a last release or build
number I can refer to?

?2 Does Windows still have updates for Win98SE?

?3 What is the oldest/most stable/quickest start-up/quickest operationally;
version of Word (WinWord Version 2 etc) that will open the latest documents
created in Word XP.  It doesn't have to open all macro's as I don't
encounter them too much in Word documents.

?4 What is the oldest/most stable/quickest start-up/quickest operationally
version of Excel that will open the latest spreadsheets created in Excel XP.
Macro's a are more likely with excel, so any comments about limitations
would be appreciated.

?5 Version numbers for other app's like:
Adobe Reader
Internet Explorer (or other browser)
Email Browser
Audio & Video Media Players
and any others that I have forgotten that you think may be useful.

Thanks in advance for any comments (except any flaming :-)).