Well it does depend on what you do with it. but I have read many articles on the memory leakage that Windows has.(mostly concerning ME and 98). And windows can last a long time.. the longest I have seen is this lady had a 5+ yr old computer that had win 98 on and was still working. she wanted me to maintainance it cuase it was slowing down. oh boy.. I had a mouth full to tell her. She really had too much on it.

Anyways, I have had windows last awhile, on non-internet computers.. but eventually they almost all die. True I use the computer nearly 12 hours a day even if it isn't online. Which I think is part of the problem.

As an example let me say, my Macintosh LC III, has a total of 0 MB free. it has so little ram that it is non-existent(I can check, if I bother to pull it out of storage), and it's processor is of course old. Basically it is now as it was when it was made. On to the story. We had Sim City 2000 on it. and my bro ran that computer for 7 days straight playing Sim City. It never slowed down. Even when it got to the really busy parts no matter how long we left it, it kept going. Now THAT is what I consider a good system.. we overworked the poor thing so bad that I thought it would start smoking. Btw having no freespace isn't a good thing.. the reason we had to play like 7 days straight is cause we couldn't save our game files ... I think I'll fire it up sometime this week for nostagilic sake.

But yes I know I read somewhere( a pc magazine maybe) that it was recomended to reinstall Win98 2-3 times a year to maintain performance. however I know if you work it right it can last longer. but I know it must leak memory... leaving it on for a week while running heavy loads isn't possible.. or at least I haven't managed it.