But as Carnage pointed out. Windows XP was double the resources of Windows 98. So would that mean that a comparison of 98 to XP that 98 would be better to run?
The problem with 98, was that it was awfully unstable. It was still basically a complicated DOS program.
So even if XP was slower on 128MB RAM, it was far more stable even without service packs.
Though since RAM is very cheap right now. I think testing should be done on at least 2GB RAM nowadays. (I mean, you can get 2GB for AU$50 or less, and that's only going to decrease)
But, I have run XP SP3 (3180) and Vista Home Premium 32-bit in VMware, both using 2GB RAM (I have 4GB RAM running XP x64)
VMware might not be the best way to test them, but they were on equal grounds.
But XP was much snappier even with much of the bloat including themes, indexing, many services disabled in Vista. XP still had themes turned on.
Also, I tried increasing the RAM to 2.5GB in Vista, and using 1GB in XP.
XP was still significantly snappier.
at least in VMware, I think XP is the way to go.
If I find the time, I might try testing Vista 64 SP1 against XP x64 SP2, and XP 32 SP3 just on their own
I have 4GB RAM and a fast system