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WinWorld has been particularly useful to me this past week! I live in a room in a house of a homestay family who have 2 daughters aged 6 and 9. It was the olde

WinWorld has been particularly useful to me this past week! I live in a room in a house of a homestay family who have 2 daughters aged 6 and 9. It was the older daughter's birthday, and I thought I'd give her a Raspberry Pi. However, although I managed to get a spare VGA screen, USB keyboard and mouse, I would've had to spend about $100 on the Pi, SD card, and HDMI to VGA adaptor. I went to a scrapyard and found a Thinkpad T22 for $5. It's great for learning to code in Logo, drawing with Kid Pix, running Mac System 7 with Basilisk II, or playing Alien Force, Asteroid, Pipe Dream, The Sims, SimCity, Bejeweled, Mahjong, even Age of Empires II. It can even play videos with VLC, though it doesn't have WiFi so parental controls over Internet access are quite simple: go to mummy's room to plug it in. Getting the installation kits for old Windows versions was straightforward thanks to winworldpc, and I'm very grateful for it.

zozbot234 7y ago
The Thinkpad T22 shipped with 128MB or 256MB RAM out of the box, which ought to be enough for an Alpine Linux install if nothing else. It's sad though that its specs are not enough to support a reasonably-modern OS in a more straightforward way. We should not have to rely on old bootleg Win98SE or the like to make this first-class hardware useful.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  I was asked by a cousin to help find something old and definitely offline so his kid can learn to type his name, draw on MSPaint (or similar), things that we deem basic but for a below-10yo seem miraculous. He doesn't want to just throw him a tablet and let him be. He wants to have a feeling for computing "the good old way" (not as far as DOS but Win98SE was good-looking enough and could do what he needs). Please don't trash Win98SE :)
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    I'm not trashing Win98SE, I'm just "trashing" the use of bootleg software which I do find a bit distasteful in this day and age. Linux has plenty of nice educational games IIRC, even xpaint is right there. (BTW, FreeDOS comes with a bunch of cool GUI interfaces - not as nice-looking as Win98SE but quite usable. Do note that old OS's like FreeDOS, even Win9x can be a bit of a challenge to get to run even in a VM, since by default they will be hogging 100% of the CPU. There are HLT-issuing background tools that solve this for both FreeDOS/MS-DOS and Win9x, but you do have to get them installed and running properly.)
    - jsjohnst 7y ago
      > I'm just "trashing" the use of bootleg software which I do find a bit distasteful in this day and age It’s rather presumptive to assume GP is “bootlegging” software just because they got install media from WW. The Thinkpad T22 came with Windows 98SE originally, so it’s very possible the Windows license certificate was still stuck to the bottom of the machine.
duff_ww 7y ago
I'm glad you've found it useful, hearing stories like this always brings a smile to my face. It's exactly why I created WinWorld so many years ago. - Duff (Founder, WW)
- ralphc 7y ago
  I have a 20-year old machine that came with Windows ME. With the help of your site I've turned it into a Windows 98 SE gaming and DOS machine, it's more useful now. Thank you for the site.

zozbot234 7y ago

The Thinkpad T22 shipped with 128MB or 256MB RAM out of the box, which ought to be enough for an Alpine Linux install if nothing else. It's sad though that its specs are not enough to support a reasonably-modern OS in a more straightforward way. We should not have to rely on old bootleg Win98SE or the like to make this first-class hardware useful.

HenryBemis 7y ago
I was asked by a cousin to help find something old and definitely offline so his kid can learn to type his name, draw on MSPaint (or similar), things that we deem basic but for a below-10yo seem miraculous. He doesn't want to just throw him a tablet and let him be. He wants to have a feeling for computing "the good old way" (not as far as DOS but Win98SE was good-looking enough and could do what he needs). Please don't trash Win98SE :)
- zozbot234 7y ago
  I'm not trashing Win98SE, I'm just "trashing" the use of bootleg software which I do find a bit distasteful in this day and age. Linux has plenty of nice educational games IIRC, even xpaint is right there. (BTW, FreeDOS comes with a bunch of cool GUI interfaces - not as nice-looking as Win98SE but quite usable. Do note that old OS's like FreeDOS, even Win9x can be a bit of a challenge to get to run even in a VM, since by default they will be hogging 100% of the CPU. There are HLT-issuing background tools that solve this for both FreeDOS/MS-DOS and Win9x, but you do have to get them installed and running properly.)
  - jsjohnst 7y ago
    > I'm just "trashing" the use of bootleg software which I do find a bit distasteful in this day and age It’s rather presumptive to assume GP is “bootlegging” software just because they got install media from WW. The Thinkpad T22 came with Windows 98SE originally, so it’s very possible the Windows license certificate was still stuck to the bottom of the machine.

duff_ww 7y ago

I'm glad you've found it useful, hearing stories like this always brings a smile to my face. It's exactly why I created WinWorld so many years ago. - Duff (Founder, WW)

ralphc 7y ago
I have a 20-year old machine that came with Windows ME. With the help of your site I've turned it into a Windows 98 SE gaming and DOS machine, it's more useful now. Thank you for the site.