12-08-2012, 11:52 AM
Hi Joe,
The "Celeron" CPUs were cut-down versions of the main Intel Pentium chips - they were pretty similar in all regards, but had less level 2 cache memory. How much difference this made depends on the applications you run, but in practice, I've never really noticed much (if any) difference between Celerons and Pentiums of the same clock speed. The initial Celerons had no L2 cache memory at all, and that did make them a bit of a dog - but even a little cache goes a long way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeron
In fact, I've remembered that my PII 333 that I refer to so fondly above is actually the Celeron version. It was much, much cheaper at the time. And according to that article, it seems that it was rather too close to the performance of the equivalent PII.
If you have a 500MHz Celeron, then it's probably based on the PII core. Depending on the motherboard you have, there might well be some upgrade options lurking in my stores - take a couple of pictures next time you take the lid off. It might be possible to fit a later PIII to the motherboard...
Windows 98 is not the best platform to use for internet access. It's much better to use an OS based on the Windows NT kernel, such as 2000, XP, Vista, 7, etc - you really need proper multitasking and more security over memory access. Also, a lot of modern web browsers don't support Win98 - I've got FireFox 2 on my Win98 machine, but versions 3 onwards require XP or later. Naturally, you really shouldn't be using Internet Explorer - any version, on any OS.
The speed issue will be partly down to the basic performance of the hardware. Modern websites use a lot of complex stuff in the background - a lot of which needs to be interpreted locally on your machine by the browser. In particular, JavaScript is very heavily used on most sites, especially things like Facebook - even this simple forum has a surprising amount. JavaScript is very powerful and the interpreters need to be complex, yet quick. Some websites are entirely generated on the local machine using JavaScript - though some of this is technology for the sake of it IMHO.
The connection speed is less likely to be the issue, although it does depend on what you mean - if my ADSL connected at that speed I'd be pretty pleased (it's only 6.2mb/s at the moment, although normally it's more like 8mb/s). I remember when 10mb/s used to be the norm for wired networks, although of course 100mb/s and 1gb/s is the norm now - but while your local network speed helps a lot with copying big files between your computers, it's unlikely to be an issue for web browsing, where your ADSL speed and ISP are the likely bottlenecks. As you mention 11mb/s, I'm wondering if this is a wireless network (I'm less familiar with the various WLAN speeds, but I think I've seen 11mb/s when my wireless signal is poor). Needless to say, for desktop machines, it's always best to go wired if you can (I have about 50 decent 3Com PCI network cards if anyone needs one). Often easier said than done, of course - I've got a fairly major project that involves installing some cable ducts in a lathe and plaster wall to act as a "riser" between the cellar, first floor and attic. One day...
It's definitely true that as hardware gets faster, the interfaces don't! The extra horsepower is used to animate the graphical interface or make windows transparent (WTF???) - needless to say, all these effects get switched straight off! Programmes don't open any faster as they are much bigger to load into memory - depressingly, it's cheaper to upgrade the hardware than to write programmes properly. It's actually quite refreshing to go back to Windows 98 or even 3.11 to see how quick things could run on really quite limited systems. I remember being really impressed with RISCOS on the Acorn Archimedes, a machine that was a decade ahead of its time. Which gets us back to the Raspberry Pi, which will be able to run RISCOS one day
All the best,
Mark
The "Celeron" CPUs were cut-down versions of the main Intel Pentium chips - they were pretty similar in all regards, but had less level 2 cache memory. How much difference this made depends on the applications you run, but in practice, I've never really noticed much (if any) difference between Celerons and Pentiums of the same clock speed. The initial Celerons had no L2 cache memory at all, and that did make them a bit of a dog - but even a little cache goes a long way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeron
In fact, I've remembered that my PII 333 that I refer to so fondly above is actually the Celeron version. It was much, much cheaper at the time. And according to that article, it seems that it was rather too close to the performance of the equivalent PII.
If you have a 500MHz Celeron, then it's probably based on the PII core. Depending on the motherboard you have, there might well be some upgrade options lurking in my stores - take a couple of pictures next time you take the lid off. It might be possible to fit a later PIII to the motherboard...
Windows 98 is not the best platform to use for internet access. It's much better to use an OS based on the Windows NT kernel, such as 2000, XP, Vista, 7, etc - you really need proper multitasking and more security over memory access. Also, a lot of modern web browsers don't support Win98 - I've got FireFox 2 on my Win98 machine, but versions 3 onwards require XP or later. Naturally, you really shouldn't be using Internet Explorer - any version, on any OS.
The speed issue will be partly down to the basic performance of the hardware. Modern websites use a lot of complex stuff in the background - a lot of which needs to be interpreted locally on your machine by the browser. In particular, JavaScript is very heavily used on most sites, especially things like Facebook - even this simple forum has a surprising amount. JavaScript is very powerful and the interpreters need to be complex, yet quick. Some websites are entirely generated on the local machine using JavaScript - though some of this is technology for the sake of it IMHO.
The connection speed is less likely to be the issue, although it does depend on what you mean - if my ADSL connected at that speed I'd be pretty pleased (it's only 6.2mb/s at the moment, although normally it's more like 8mb/s). I remember when 10mb/s used to be the norm for wired networks, although of course 100mb/s and 1gb/s is the norm now - but while your local network speed helps a lot with copying big files between your computers, it's unlikely to be an issue for web browsing, where your ADSL speed and ISP are the likely bottlenecks. As you mention 11mb/s, I'm wondering if this is a wireless network (I'm less familiar with the various WLAN speeds, but I think I've seen 11mb/s when my wireless signal is poor). Needless to say, for desktop machines, it's always best to go wired if you can (I have about 50 decent 3Com PCI network cards if anyone needs one). Often easier said than done, of course - I've got a fairly major project that involves installing some cable ducts in a lathe and plaster wall to act as a "riser" between the cellar, first floor and attic. One day...
It's definitely true that as hardware gets faster, the interfaces don't! The extra horsepower is used to animate the graphical interface or make windows transparent (WTF???) - needless to say, all these effects get switched straight off! Programmes don't open any faster as they are much bigger to load into memory - depressingly, it's cheaper to upgrade the hardware than to write programmes properly. It's actually quite refreshing to go back to Windows 98 or even 3.11 to see how quick things could run on really quite limited systems. I remember being really impressed with RISCOS on the Acorn Archimedes, a machine that was a decade ahead of its time. Which gets us back to the Raspberry Pi, which will be able to run RISCOS one day
All the best,
Mark
