On 25 Jun 01 at 0:37, Automatic digest processor wrote:

>>I have seen several folks putting #486 back to work, it seems like
>>a good idea, if only using it for E-mail. My question ,are there any
>>"dial up apps" "E-mail apps" and browsers out there that will run
>>on dos 6.2 win 3.1 and only 8 megs ram, the HDD will hold 1.2GB
>>Thanks for any info.

I setup an Acer 486DX2/66 w/24 megs ram, an old USR Sportster 33.6k
modem, for some friends from church, and I put on Win95 (a
lightweight install as it only has a Drivespaced 120 meg drive), IE
5.0, DUN 1.3, Juno Email, and Bluelight.com sofware. It runs
surprisingly well, considering Bluelight recommends a P75 as their
minimum system specs. If they really take a shine to this computer
stuff they will outgrow it pretty soon, but it makes a good, free,
introduction to computers and the internet. Their son installed
Netzero's proprietary software, but I would not recommend that
stuff for ANY 486. I would recommend Foxmail as a good lightweight
email client. Very small footprint, and not very demanding on the
hardware. I would not necessarily abandon Win3.1 for internet use as
IE 3.0 is still pretty functional, and Netscape 4.xx is even better,
albeit a bit slower than IE. That Foxmail email client is still
available in a 16 bit version, though I don't think the author is
supporting it any more. If you wan't to try something a bit different
you might want to try some DOS internet apps. I am typing this
message using Pegasus Mail for DOS v3.50 and am using the Arachne DOS
graphical browser (v1.70) for email transport and browsing on a
486DX4/100 with 32 megs RAM (15 megs for a RAM disk). There are other
choices for both email and surfing that I'd be glad to discuss with
you off list. There are viable choices for older hardware. Don't
forget some of the lightweight Linux distros, expecially if you can
accept a non-GUI environment. HTH.

Regards,
Dale Mentzer

Backups? We doan *NEED* no steenking baX%^~,VbKx  NO CARRIER


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