Lynn’s Computer Upgrades
Dear [Lynn],
Good thing you’re getting rid of 95. I don’t believe Microsoft supports it at all anymore, not even on their web sites.
I can appreciate the cash flow issues, as I have some of those myself right now. 
But you might be able to get a few more years of life out of your home machine as long as you don’t put any CPU-hungry software on it. Up until last month, I was using a Pentium Pro 200 MHz. machine for keeping bills, writing small documents and such. I believe yours is faster than that one.
You might be able to get a bit more speed out of your box if you put Windows XP on it, but this is not guaranteed. Certain bench tests show XP to run some of the common tasks such as desktop operations and Internet browsing a bit faster and more reliably since it runs in full 32-bit protected mode (unlike Win 98 which still has lots of 16-bit code in it). It tends to crash less.
However, upgrading an old machine like yours may put you into the bind of finding XP-compatible drivers for your printer, modem, video, and sound cards. Also, some of the software that runs on Windows 98 will not run well on XP. So there is definitely a gamble.
Tom