Desktop

You should have no problems upgrading. There may be some minor driver issues but those are pretty easy to fix. I would, however, recommend that you not install ME. I've heard too many horror stories about that OS.

according to microsoft support to win98 will stop in January, and I don't thnk you can get a legal copy anyway of win98. So I suggest not to upgrade to win98.
Indeed ME has a lot of problems.
If the laptop has more then 196 MB memory and is w2k compliant (you can aske dell or check their website) I would uprade to w2k and higher.

Leopold

you will see quite a hit in performance 95 to 98. definitely forget ME, too buggy......can you just live with windows 95 until you can afford a new laptop? what is driving your upgrade decision?
Dell often will talk about upgrading and issues so a visit to their website with your service tag number in hand will be interesting and you can begin to download and burn cd's of the drivers you will need...laptops can be trickier to upgrade than desktops. often a BIOS update is a really good idea...dell will tell...

It depends on the CPU, amount of RAM, and free hard drive space.

If the CPU is a 233 or less, I would stick with W95.
On a 233 system, W98 is at least 10 percent slower than W95.

If you install W98, you want 128MB to 256MB of RAM.

You want to have 1GB of free hard drive space after installing W98.

Check if Dell offers W98 drivers for your system.
Some devices, such as sound cards, will not function properly without the correct drivers.

Chas

No you shouldn't have any problems upgrading. All you need to do is buy the upgrade version of either version of Windows your prefer. Then follow all the nice dialog boxes. :-) Easy as cake. May I suggest however that if you are debating between Win98 or WinME, I would go with 98. Even though ME is more current than 98, 98 is much more stable. ME has issues with crashes & other problems whereas 98 doesn't. Just my two cents.

Good luck with your upgrade! :-)

No you shouldn't have any problems upgrading. All you need to do is buy the upgrade version of either version of Windows your prefer. Then follow all the nice dialog boxes. :-) Easy as cake. May I suggest however that if you are debating between Win98 or WinME, I would go with 98. Even though ME is more current than 98, 98 is much more stable. ME has issues with crashes & other problems whereas 98 doesn't. Just my two cents.

Good luck with your upgrade! :-)