This evening, I prepared a computer for the lab. Don’t blame me but it has to be under MS-Windows and with MS-Office. Knowing it’s only an Intel Pentium II MMX (“x86 Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3”) with 64Mb of RAM and 2.4Gb of hard disk, I needed to find general software that has the smallest footprint in terms of both memory and hard disk consumption. Here is a small list of software I found interesting (mainly for me to remember):
- 7-zip, to create and read archive (free software, GPL)
- Foxit Reader, to view and read PDF files (freeware, closed sources)
- IrfanView for basic image manipulation (freeware, closed sources)
- Mozilla Firefox to browse the web + webmail (free software, GPL)
- PDF Creator to create PDF files (free software, GPL)
- FreeRAM XP Pro to free and optimise RAM
- Since it won’t be my computer, I didn’t installed those software but they could be useful: Vim to edit texts (free software, GPL-compatible charityware), Psi for Jabber (and other IM gateways) (free software, GPL) and R for statistics (free software, GPL)
It boots in 205 seconds ; it’s quite long but, hey, it’s Windows ! When Linux was on this computer, I could work in less than a minute after boot (with more software installed and more hard disk space left). Hard disk space left for data: 914Mb (it should be enough for a M.Sc. thesis).
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