Question What should I do with these?

[Bunny Man]

I have recently purchased 55 Dell 360s at an auction (Very Cheap). The hard drives were completely wiped of everything. They all have 80GB (SATA, 7200 RPM) Hard Drives, Pentium Processor (E5200/2.50GHz, 2M, 800,FSB), either 3 or 4GB RAM (Non-ECC,800MHz DDR2), Cyberlink Power DVD player (I have not found one that works yet), all in a Opti 360, Desktop Base (Mid size desktop case). The original OS when purchased by the school I got them from was “Vista Business”. I have a power cord and keyboard for each, no mouse or moniters.
I plan on giving some of them to friends and family (if they want them) some to the rector of our church for needy children, and I’d like to sell a few to make back what I spent on them (Not Much at all!)
As they have No operating systems, I have loaded Linux Mint on one (works Great) and I have managed to get Windows XP SP1 working on one (pretty slow and has problems viewing websites, but it still needs all the updates).
I would like to take suggestions of what OS I should load and what purpose it would serve best.
Examples;
• Linux Mint – a Science experiment to teach people linux
• Windows XP – old school games (I want Win 98 also)
BTW, they have no wireless cards so I purchased several very cheap usb wireless adapters that will be optional.
I am also open to hardware suggestions that might upgrade them for other uses (I’m going to see how much difference a small SSD will make).
Last question – all of the computers are very similar, Can I Clone the drive with Win XP and copy it to another computer and have it work?
This is all a Science experiment for me too!
Thanks
Pete

 

[Lutfij]

I doubt adding a discrete GPU to the one's that end up being leftover from the giveaways will be a good idea since the PSU's in them might very well be shot or on their way out. If you had access to Windows 7, you could have them on the prebuilts, without much issue. If you did add a cheap SSD to the system's they would feel a lot better than an HDD.

Can I Clone the drive with Win XP and copy it to another computer and have it work?
You could but I'd install the OS across them all from scratch to root out any bugs or issues one of your leftover system's might have. It'll take more time but you're confident that the install was without an issue.

 

[Bunny Man]

I doubt adding a discrete GPU to the one's that end up being leftover from the giveaways will be a good idea since the PSU's in them might very well be shot or on their way out. If you had access to Windows 7, you could have them on the prebuilts, without much issue. If you did add a cheap SSD to the system's they would feel a lot better than an HDD.

Can I Clone the drive with Win XP and copy it to another computer and have it work?
You could but I'd install the OS across them all from scratch to root out any bugs or issues one of your leftover system's might have. It'll take more time but you're confident that the install was without an issue.

Thank You for the input!
I agree on the GPU, I'll be keeping a few computers and might experiment with old stuff I have laying around, but that's it.
I was kind of thinking the same about the cloning, but the OS loading and updating is very slow for windows! Linux isn't bad though.

Thanks
Pete

BTW I didn't mention in the original post that the real reason I was even looking at the auction in the first place was that I have a embroidery machine with software that was originally made for Windows 95. I kept an old computer running for several years but ended up just putting the embroidery machine away. Now I want to get it back out and running. Years ago I got the embroidery software to run on XP so I figure I can get it to run again.

 

[Lutfij]

Not a bad idea...actually, reviving the embroidery machine!

 

[geofelt]

Buy a ssd for the one you want to experiment with.
It will make everything go much quicker.
A SSD is the one key thing that will make those units work well.


The pc came with a 32 bit os which is appropriate for the 1 to 4gb of max ram.
Here are the pc specs:
https://www1.la.dell.com/gd/en/corp...360/pd.aspx?refid=desktop-optiplex-360&s=corp

Why not try to install windows 10?
I think you can download a 32 bit version directly from MS.
64 bit might be ok if you have 4gb of ram.
You will not need a license so long as you can tolerate a faint logo on the display that reminds you to activate.

The 225w psu should be able to handle a low power graphics card like a GT1030
which has a max draw of 30w.
Possibly even a GTX1050 that runs on pcie slot power max 75w.

 

[Bunny Man]

Buy a ssd for the one you want to experiment with.
It will make everything go much quicker.
A SSD is the one key thing that will make those units work well.


The pc came with a 32 bit os which is appropriate for the 1 to 4gb of max ram.
Here are the pc specs:
https://www1.la.dell.com/gd/en/corp...360/pd.aspx?refid=desktop-optiplex-360&s=corp

Why not try to install windows 10?
I think you can download a 32 bit version directly from MS.
64 bit might be ok if you have 4gb of ram.
You will not need a license so long as you can tolerate a faint logo on the display that reminds you to activate.

The 225w psu should be able to handle a low power graphics card like a GT1030
which has a max draw of 30w.
Possibly even a GTX1050 that runs on pcie slot power max 75w.

A co-worker just gave me a 256GB SSD, I'm going to play with it this weekend! lol