How old a computer could you go back to?

[Pawnless Endgame]

Hypothetical or real question here. I was away from home for a week recently with an old Dell Insprion 5150. It's late 2003 era. Specs are: hyperthreaded P4 2400MHz, 512MB of PC2700, 60GB hard disk and dedicated Geforce 5200 graphics, running XP Home. Standard wired optical mouse as input. It's been passed down the family to me, so I use it as a spare or travelling computer.

Firefox annihilates the RAM so I bunged in an extra gig and it's fine on 1.5GB. It can just about play 720p videos, which is pretty much the limit in CPU usage. I can do all the normal stuff I'd do on a desktop PC, wireless internet, browse, chat, draw, program disco lights, play the synthesiser through it (Sigmatel C-Major sound card) and play Age of Empires II which is quite frankly the best PC game ever

So yes, I could use this as my full time computer, perhaps for a month. After that though, I think I would want to go back to my blu-rays and would need my more recent machine. Just wondered how far you guys could go back if you were stuck with an old computer for a bit.

I remember in 1998, I borrowed someone's old 386 IBM PC at 16MHz. Was a bit slow with Windows 3.1. Should had kept it as a DOS machine tbh.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

My laptop is also from 2003, P4 2.8GHz, GFX card Go 5500 FX I think it is. 0.5GB DDR1.
It's just manageable but takes 6 weeks to boot and the battery is completely cream-crackered, not that it ever lasted more than 20 mins while playing a game.....

Similar / slightly higher spec than mine then Likewise with yours, I still have the original battery and it lasts 20-25 minutes on a charge now.

Seems like we're mostly agreed on 2003/4 era if we were stuck!

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Talking of old software, I still use Office '97 here! It came with my 1999 Pentium II PC, professional version including Access, and I just transferred it to my next PC every time I bought one and erased it off my old. Works fine with Windows 7, although I did have to re-record my Word macros.