Friends got an awful old PC (128 MB RAM to give you an idea) with XP on which she'd like to use Messenger on.

She's tried Pidgin / Miranda, but she claims they don't support Group Conversations (which she uses a lot).

I have a sneaking suspicion that the latest version of Messenger will be far too much of a RAM hog to work (bearing in mind IE8 is too bloated to run smooth on this PC...), so whats the oldest version that still works?

They certainly do support group conversations.

Pidgin does support group conversations.

As for Messenger, version 5.1 that came with my XP64 works but only to a point. I was unable to send or receive files because of incompatibilities with newer versions. It will say it is trying to send the file but it doesn't alert the other user so they cannot accept it. If the other user tries to send a file their version of Messenger will tell them the other persons version doesn't support this feature.
So it works for basic conversations but does have issues. I don't know about group conversations with this version - I think it worked in the past but newer versions could have changed that too.

Turns out that both Pidgin and Miranda do group convos ok... women and technology, eh?

*inb4Becky*

pidgin is the better choice tho.

Messenger v1 still works if you hack the internal version number in the .exe

Couldn`t stand v9, so I`m still using 8.5 using that method.

A PC with 128mb of ram isn't compatible with the modern world anymore.

just tell her to get a new pc already

With that crappy PC you'd be better of with Windows 98. Or try some Linux, but don't ask me 'cause I don't know jack-s**t about Linux.

Quote from Jertje :

A PC with 128mb of ram isn't compatible with the modern world anymore.

Seems to surf the internet ok using K-Meleon and a 3G connection... just.

Quote from Shotglass :

just tell her to get a new pc already

If your paying... sure

Quote from breadfan :

With that crappy PC you'd be better of with Windows 98. Or try some Linux, but don't ask me 'cause I don't know jack-s**t about Linux.

Windows 98 doesn't work very well, and also doesn't work with 3G modems afaik. And don't even get me started on Linux (I just dont know enough).


She'll get a new PC when she goes to Uni... in a years time. For the time being I find it oddly fun to get acceptable performance from something that should be in a museum

Quote from Jertje :

A PC with 128mb of ram isn't compatible with the modern world anymore.

That's half the amount of RAM cellphones have nowadays (Nokia N8 256MB, iPhone 3Gs 256MB), and just the same amount they used to have since like 2007 (N95 128MB, N97 128MB, iPhone 3G and 2G 128MB, etc).

It's pretty impressive how technology evolves fast.