I built my computer about 3 years ago (its actually abit less then 3 years) out of basically garbage components. All my parts are literally from the garbage. They were throwing out some computers at my grandma's work (shes the janitor) and the security said she can take them. So I parts out of multiple machines (some machines were missin RAM/Hard Drives/Fans/ Procesors/you name it) and I out this together. It really doesnt bother me what type of rating my machine gets cause I figure its going to be low. But I would appreciate your honest opinions.

Here are my specs:

IBM Aptiva Case
ACER Motherboard
AMD K-6 II (Chomper Extended (CXT), 250 nm) 550 MHz
Slot 1: 128 MB PC-100 RAM, Slot 2: 64 MB PC-100 RAM
Fujutsu 4.8 GB (Windows 98 SE boot)
WD Caviar 853.6 MB (Windows 95 Boot)
Segate 4.3 GB (Windows XP Professional SPK-1)
Double Speed CD-ROM Drive
IBM 101/102-key Keyboard
Logitech USB wheel mouse (one of those laser light mouse)
Floppy Drive
2 USB Ports
1 Parallel Printer Port
1 Onboard Ethernet port
15" Microscan 3GP/ADI CRT Monitor

Well I'd definitely avoid using XP! think 98 might run at a struggle.

To tell you the truth Windows 98 SE runs fine, I dont have any struggles with it. Windows 95 is abvious it runs flawless. XP Pro runs ok but I really dont use it much. I mostly use 98 SE.

It's basically junk, but the price was right.

This system would run actually Windows XP fine, provided it had a little more RAM. 256 MB is really the baseline for acceptable XP performance; 512 MB will mean no swapping at all. With 512MB, Windows XP should be faster than Windows 98.

Well XP Pro really only needs a 233Mhz processor with 128MB Ram but yeah XP would run better with more RAM