What is it like to browse the Internet using Windows 98 on 2014? We are going to explore today how to surf the internet using an old computer with Windows 98 and what are the web apps that we could use using this old system.
I am running Windows 98 Second Edition with 512MB of RAM. Let us check the browser of this 15-year-old computer and see how it works in today’s modern internet with an old OS. You can install Firefox any higher than version 2.0 but with a patch, user-generated patch called KernelEx, you can install up to Firefox version 10. It is more than good enough for modern Internet browsing.
Let us talk about my actual experience with the websites I visited. For Google.com, it was awesome. It even suggested that I should install Chrome as if it does not know that I am using Windows 98. Automatic search as you type in Google works. Bing also works. When you check Firefox, it says you are using the latest version. Now on YouTube, apparently Flash 10 works. I watched some videos. It seems that sometimes it crashes when I watch heavy flash videos. YouTube ads run, this is good news.
For embedded videos, I mean YouTube embedded on websites, Firefox loads it, but it crashed in the middle of playing.
I also tried downloading modern apps. I tried downloading VLC. This is a modern media player for Windows 7 and 8. The target was to run this modern app to an old OS architecture. By the way, I also downloaded LibreOffice 4.1 but it does not work. You need to relax while using this old OS because back on the days when one app crashed, the whole operating system also will crash. Back on VLC, even though the installer was designed for the new versions of Windows, it still installed VLC on Windows 98, thanks to backwards compatibility.
KernelEx allows you to use some modern apps on a Windows 98 environment. You can install Firefox. I think they recommend using Firefox 8.0. Opera 11.50 also works with Adobe Flash 10.3 support for YouTube. All you have to do is just download this app at Sourceforge and run this on your old computer.
In conclusion, while you can still use your old computer, in our case a computer running with Windows 98, you will still have to face some crashes. This might be fine for you if just needed Google to search something or watch some videos on YouTube but if you do not have patience, you need to use a modern computer.
