I have Acer Aspire 3610, a laptop released back in 2004, boasting Intel Pentium M clocked at 1.6 GHz. With a limited set of RAM with 2×1 GB DDR2 sticks and just enough 160 GB of IDE HDD, I think I could use this bonker for other purpose that may suits me.

Oh, I installed Windows XP Professional in this laptop instead of Windows 7 or maybe Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 because I just want something that periodically-correct and way smoother to run. I still found it difficult to get the correct Linux distro for my use case because most of them are also dropping support for x86 CPU like on this laptop.

Markdown ftw

In terms of productivity, I relying on Obsidian both on my main computer, my main laptop and my phone to jot down my articles, scripts, projects and drafts mostly now. I use Google Docs once in a while if the thing I’m working on is ready to publish, or I want to share it with someone else, or if I just want to do so.

I have installed periodically-correct version of Microsoft Office in this laptop with Microsoft Office 2003 Professinal. But I still think Markdown is the best choice for me because plain text is way better than a proprietary format with tons of non-necessary things inside the file. Well, I would use it, but not on every ocassion.

Looking for the editor

Looking of older version of Microsoft Office to run on Windows XP is maybe easy, but looking for markdown editor for Windows XP, that’s another story. Because even though I could use some smaller editor that already well-known by a lot of people, looking for the past versions is a difficult task. QOwnNotes said that they may still supports Windows XP with their build of QOwnNotes that use Qt 5.7, but I can’t find the prebuild binaries and doesn’t want to build it myself.

I got MarkdownPad 2 on my hand like what am I using right now. It’s definitely a good choice for someone who’s looking for a markdown editor for Windows XP like me. There’s a toolbar to help to style the text and insert the formatting you like. But there’s a caveat. See, if you want to insert an image to the editor, MarkdownPad only relying on uploaded image on the internet, wherever you want to put it in. If you want to upload your own image, you have to upload it first, whether it’s by yourself or with the built-in option to Imgur. But what’s even worse is that the app can’t reach the URL because, yeah, it’s in Windows XP. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But other than that, you can pretty much use this app for writing things without any image attached. Making it more distraction-free, even. Yeah, that’s sounds cruel, but it’s still useful otherwise.