On 22 May 2007 19:38:29 -0700,
wrote:

Hello everybody!
I have a friend with an old Pentium 1 desktop with windows 95 lying
around. I think that the processor is rated at 90 MHz and the system
has 16 MB of ram.
I was wondering if the computer is still powerful enough to be still
used to view .jpg images. The images do not have to be larger than
800x600 resolution.

Yes, though it's not the output display resolution that
would matter, it is the decompressed size of the image that
would need fit within real + virtual memory, meaning if they
were very large it could be a bit sluggish to display or
very very large, that it couldn't decode.

I also have no idea about what graphics card the system has, but I
think that it definatley has 2 MB of onboard memory.

That's enough for the desired 800 x 600 @ 24 bit output.


Otherwise I do not know anything else about the specs, and I would not
be able to provide additional information.
I was thinking of trying to get it to work with ACDSee 3.0. I tested
the program on my Windows XP machine, and it used about 10-12 MB of
ram when viewing .jpg's of these resolutions.
What are your thoughts on this? Can it be done?

ACDSee may be a bit heavy consumer of memory compared to
some old picture viewer but today I can't tell you what old
software is the lightest memory footprint. So you might
look around for very old software as they all tended to get
more bloated (or back then, even legitimate features people
frequently desired might add to that). Of course it would
need support Win95 and I don't know if ACDSee does or at
that version #3.0. You might find it uses less memory if
you don't install all the picture decoding filters, only
support for those image formats you're sure you need like
JPG. I recall at some point ACDSee allowed choosing what it
installed and on slower systems you can also see it loading
these support files when it starts.

Also I was wondering how many colors does Windows 98 support? Can it
go to 32-bit?

Yes it would do 32 bit but 24 bit is sufficient if the
display driver supports it, and Win98 uses more memory. You
might use "98lite" to make a very lightweight hybrid Win98
using Win95 shell, it could end up the most versatile.



P.S. the computer was purchased around the year 1995, if this helps.

Not really but keep in mind that it might be old and die on
you. If it has a Realtime Clock module instead of a coin
cell battery it might also be needing the clock set every
time even if it doesn't also stop during posting and require
manual intervention to complete the boot sequence. Other
parts like capacitors on the motherboard (and fans, if it
had ran for most of these past years) may be weak and
shorten lifespan... or it could run for another 10 years or
more instead, as back then the currents were lower and if
kept in a mild environment, kept clean and ventilated enough
that era of hardware tended to last a long time.