When Micro$oft decided to end support for Win98 my old laptop, a Dell Inpirion 3500, seemed destined for the recycle center. It was still in good shape and all the peripherals worked (CD, dual batteries, floppy, etc). So I didn't just want to toss it out. Upgrading to Win2K was not an option because of the limited resources (400Mhz processor and 4Gb hard drive).
Instead I installed FreeBSD 6.1 (later upgraded to 6.2) and added the BlackBox window manager (pkg_add -r blackbox). I'm sitting here editing this blog from my laptop. Admittedly FreeBSD is not a 'normal' choice for an ex-WinDoze system, but having worked with FreeBSD at Fermilab it was not completely unfamiliar either. I can run the command line interface (useful for home network admin tasks) with as little as 20Mb of memory (the laptop only has 64Mb). The 4Gb hard drive is still 75% free after the install.
Running X windows w/ the BlackBox (/usr/ports/x11-wm/blackbox) window manager and Firefox 1.5 requires only 60Mb! Factor in the zero cost for FreeBSD and Firefox and this old laptop will still be in the house for the foreseeable future.
For a 'simple' networked device that gets used on weekends and evenings to browse the web (in an ultra secure OS) I can't complain! Heck I'm so happy with this system I had to tell others.
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