I noticed after publishing this video that I didn't have the proper video driver installed on the XP machine (ugh). I went back and installed it, which did improve video playback performance on TH-cam. It's also worth noting that this computer doesn't have a dedicated GPU, and is using the onboard Intel graphics. Still, the video playback even with the default driver was much better than I expected! I also heard from a friend of the developer, who maintains the old-browser-friendly download site, and was told that it displays properly in Internet Explorer 6 now! (in the video, the menu bar on the page didn't show up correctly). Also, the developer of Supermium has a Patreon page (www.patreon.com/win32/) where you can pledge to get early access to new releases, along with an installer that works properly on XP!
Good to know! I'm curious to see how well things would go with dedicated graphics hardware, which was nothing too fancy or rare back in the day, as integrated solutions have only got to be decent in later years. Watching 720p or 1080p TH-cam videos in the late Vista/early Win7 era was not that much of a feat, really. With the player that YT used back then there's no reason things would not be just as smooth with this browser, just wonder what results we would have with the current one, which probably is a significantly heavier resource hog.
@@ckingproNot sure about this. Well, pure GPU is, true, just render picture. But modern is GPGPU with dedicated cores to support decoding video. How do you think mobile devices or set-top boxes do that? They have hardware decoders.
you know what's awesome? discord works flawlessly on this browser, even voice chat and video streaming is supported! it's honestly insane that i can stream my screen to friends on an actual windows xp pc in 2024.
There was also that chinese "360Chrome" or 360 Extreme Browser based on chrome 83 before Supermium came out, which was one of the most modern chromium based browsers you could run on XP without doing any workaround.
MJD, just wanted to thank you for all the help. Ive kept my The Dell Dimension 2400 alive using your videos as a guide for most PCs and Laptops. Saved Hours of installing modern browers. Have a wonderful day.
In addition to the browser where Supermium works, you can also get more modern software in general if you install Windows 7 (though you may need to upgrade the RAM). But, Pentium 4 isn't great for it and it will be more responsive in XP. Perhaps a dualboot.
One thing I always do with Chrome or Firefox on any older device is enable the extension enhanced h264-ify, which will let you disable 60fps and various codecs. h264 tends to be the least CPU-intensive. It's not clear to me if you could install that extension on here. If so, I'd do that. But, even then, I think it might be something to include by default to make the older computer experience better. Another useful thing would be a TH-cam extension that could play the video through another video player. VLC opens TH-cam videos, last I checked. And dedicated players tend to be more able to play on older computers.
If it's a chrome extension, you can install it. I also endorse using h264ify, VP9 is so cpu heavy it pegs badly even cpus from 5 years ago...let alone 15-20 year old pentiums. Forcing h264 makes a world of difference.
@@charginginprogresss"VP9 is so CPU heavy even on CPUs from 5 years ago" What really? I watch TH-cam on 1440p in VP9 or AV1. CPU Core i7 4790K. Barely getting 8% CPU utilization. You must have certain driver missing in your system, or, corrupted driver where it doesn't affect anything else except video playback
I am currently working on an old windows xp and turning it into a 98 machine, here's one tip: replace the hard drive, it's a wonder mine still works after 20 years lol
@@Blitzer1001 The IDE hard drive in mine is still perfect! If it were SATA I'd do it since a brand new SSD is literally a drop in replacement but with IDE you more or less need an adapter, usually to mSATA i think. Since it works I'll keep it for now
Do it! I've been tinkering with Windows XP on a 2009 iMac and I found the keyboard we used with our very first desktop PC, a Compaq iPaq. I just need an adapter to convert PS/2 to USB and it will be a blast of nostalgia.
@MicrosoftGuy I'm going to do my best! It appears to suffer from some sort of power issue,given that ACPI doesn't work in either Linux or Windows. I've been working on it on and off since 2021 or something,but couldn't find the problem. Yesterday after the billionth teardown I noticed that one of the two legs on the CMOS battery is broken,and the battery itself may be dead. While it's of the soldered type it appears to be a generic part so I'll replace it asap. If that doesn't do the trick I'll need to look for a replacement motherboard. Good thing is even if I do this I can still keep the "heart and soul" of the machine,since the CPU and GPU are replaceable. Thanks for the encouragement!
@@RohanSpartin I actually have my "early childhood" keyboard too! It was off my family's desktop pc made circa late 90s. Iirc it ran Windows Vista back when I was like 4 or 5 (Meaning 2009,2010). The keyboard's nothing special, it's a very cheap ps2 keyboard but it's precious to me
I'm currently working (and typing this on) a 16 year old Acer Aspire laptop which has a very early Core2Duo CPU and it runs TH-cam at 1080p perfectly using Opera One. I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover that upgrading the laptop to 4GB of RAM and an SSD would make it perfectly capable for regular stuff like browsing, TH-cam, text editing and even photo editing using Photoshop CS6 (runs very smooth). Heck, I've been installing dozens of quite "recent" (from very recent to 5-6 years old indie games and most run fine and are perfectly playable. For a 8600M GT I was very surprised. It's running Windows 7 Ultimate now (no longer Vista which it originally came with) but it shows that an old laptop does not automatically become junk. I have a nice CRT hooked up to it & use a modern keyboard & mouse and it's a lot of fun to use. You got to love CRTs ...
The reason TH-cam runs so well on that laptop is because of the 8600M GT likely having hardware video decoding. Even the shittiest 2 watt celeron for tiny PCs can run 4K60 TH-cam just fine thanks to the hardware video decoding support.
This is actually really cool! The lack of web browsers on old operating systems is honestly one of the biggest issues with them. You could probably actually daily drive those OSes now if you REALLY wanted to.
Unfortunately there are a lot more issues with daily driving those OSes, mainly app support if you wish to game on those OSes Steam no longer supports anything older than 10, GOG's launcher only supports Windows 8 or above (though through GOG you can launch those games without the launcher). And obviously Xbox was only introduced to Windows in Windows 10. There's also the issue of Security vulnerabilities unless someone has stepped up and is providing third party updates in 2024
@@PliskinYTI'm continuing to use Steam on a windows 7 computer, I'm sure something will break eventually but it's still working. That said, trying to play games released now on an OS from 10+ years ago is hit and miss, games contemporary with the 7 or XP are reasonable but I expect soon it will be a matter of using standalone installers like the good old days. God bless GoG. And God curse Ubisoft, who have done the opposite and made old games unplayable on the operating systems they were released for (God bless those privateering seamen, who give away keys to treasure chests). Is using XP as an everyday computer really such a security risk? If its vulnerabilities are known wouldn't it be possible, at least in principle, to patch them or else provide it external security?
You made a GREAT video here. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to use Chrome on old PCs. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 also lost support for Chrome in February 2023 (last version was 110), so this can be used for that too. (fun fact: Firefox is still technically supported on Windows 7/8/8.1, but it's "extended support" and the last actual version was 115)
@@rustymixer2886 Yes, Providing your CPU is good and you have the Ram it runs like modern chrome, I have an XP machine and it ran flawlessly, That being said it was a quad core.
Wow, that program looks very interesting to experiment in the retro computer operating system world. I will have to try it on my classic Windows XP PCs if they can handle it well. Nice work!
Reminder: if you find it valuable to have a modern browser running in legacy Windows, donate to the project. I have no connection to it, but this type of project is usually hard to sustain.
I watched this on a Dell Inspiron E1505 from 2006. Its specs are as follows: 4GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo T7600, ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, OCZ Vertex 3(?) 120GB SSD, 1680x1050 LCD, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Using Opera 95, I was able to stream this and most most other videos at 720p with minimal lagging. This laptop is currently my daily driver, despite having an 11th Gen i5 powered Lenovo within arms reach XD Thank you so much for making these videos as they have really helped me keep my old computers going! I can't wait to see whats next!
I'm watching this on a late-2009 MacBook with 8gb of ram, a Core 2 Duo p7330, geforce 9400m graphics, a 1280x800 display, a 500gb 7200RPM 2.5" hard drive(the ssd just died), and running 10.13 High Sierra.(I also have 10.7 Lion, and 10.9 Mavericks installed)
You know that, old pc is one thing, but to use OCZ Vertex...are you serious? Early SSD is not vintage, they just bad, controllers simply going nuts with bugs. You can easy switch to any modern TLC based SSD and it will be way better, even if NAND is technically worse.
@@Vednier I know, I used that drive because it’s what I had on hand, not to complete the “vintage” setup. So far, it’s been totally fine though. No errors, and it’s pretty fast,
@@93Volvo240Yes, i see, but problem with those early SSD is that they tends to just die suddenly, without any prior signs. This is, actually, problem with all SSD, but modern one at least try to show some warnings prior or go read-only on first internal problem. OCZ stuff was known to just "stop working". I would not use it for any even remotely valuable data. Its miracle its still alive, i heard of people literally changing them in months, as expendable. And one additional word about speed - probably not as fast as modern ones. Current SATA SSD already reached limits of SATA interface, some not without tricks, some by pure NAND speed.
@@Vednier I understand, but I don’t see a need to replace it right now. There is no important data on that computer whatsoever, so if the drive dies tomorrow, I’ll just replace it.
You could probably just barely push 720p on that Vista machine by using an extension to stop YT from serving 60fps video. I believe enhanced-h264ify allows you to do that, and it also lets you force YT to use different video codecs to see if those perform better or worse on old hardware.
@@KepejasLT There are multiple reasons to do so. Some people do it for nostalgia, some because they want to tinker with it. Some software that worked on XP won't work on modern operating systems, so if you have software like that and want to use it, you go with XP. Just because something is old does not mean it is useless and should just be abandoned, and just because something is new does not mean it is better in every way, or even at all.
@@KepejasLT Could be on virtual machine to run old software natively or to mess around with. If not, then it might be an extreme budget option for a shitty computer or for nostalgic purposes....or maybe if you're just masochistic I guess.
Thank you so much for these amazing videos, MJD! I love them. You are my top favorite TH-camr and I hope you continue uploading these fantastic videos ♥
i don't comment that often, because it needs a login.. i'm using open source software to watch youtube, so i'm sorry that you didn't get any money for it! (ads make me vomit! it's a waste of lifetime i never get back!) anyway, i love your channel and your content! especially videos about BeOS and HaikuOS.. because i had this systems back in the days! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SPREADING THE WORD! keep up your work here on yt! and please let me know if i can support your channel in any way! all the best, stay healthy and please upload more content!
60fps is significantly more demanding. I was actually surprised that it worked on 720p. I remember this in the early days being an issue, so I think it would have performed significantly better on a 30 or 24fps video. 720p 60fps is almost equivalent to 1440p on some devices in terms of demand in my experience.
It's awesome to think that Windows XP released in 2001, and it still gets love from developers! I'll immediately install Supermium on my Windows XP machines!
I just tried this on a 2007 Dell that was collecting dust & after turning on all the flags that enable gpu support, it runs *ever better* than it did 17 years ago?! It couldn't even handle HD video back then, but for some reason TH-cam runs perfectly fine now in Supermium? I'm kind of shocked. Major props on getting this compiled for i386 systems.
This news made my day, I've had a retro gaming XP machine with a Core i3 and Intel HD 2000 just sitting on a table for a while, this can make it a lot more fun.
This is great. Sometimes we do need to browse when in XP, like installing new drivers, that VC++ runtime, etc. when installing a game or two. However, I wouldn't suggest regular browsing on XP or even 7 for that matter. The best option is to have a dual boot setup, with a common disk partition (NTFS) accessible from both Linux and XP/ 7. The Linux could be in a different SSD, 128 GB ones are pretty cheap these days (sometimes even cheaper than a 64 GB pen drive). Then do all browsing/ network activity on that Linux which is up to date, yank the LAN cable every time booting into Windows. This simple setup makes it the most secure retro PC that can also be used regularly.
If you can install Chrome extensions, h.264ify and a GPU that supports AVC hardware decoding would make TH-cam usable. Radeon X1000 or some GeForce 600 series GPUs, or Clarkdale/Arrandale iGPUs would work.
@StringerNews1 nvidia didn't support anything more modern than the GTX 960 on XP, though I've heard the hardware checks can be circumvented and 980s can be installed.
Hey MJD, thank you so much for this video. I wouldn't have known about this browser had you not made this video! Now I can get my schoolwork done using Supermium. The only thing I have to put deal with is that I have to replace my current CPU with a hyper-threading one. The one I ordered is coming in the mail.
Most people had perfectly functioning XP machines. Those that abandoned them for newer hardware are those that are not so technically inclined. If any of you have machines stored away some where, you'll be surprised that most mid-tier legacy hardware can run Windows 10 exceptionally well circa 2005. You will be limited today dependent of your GPU in regards to video playback. I am running a Lenovo T60, custom build Windows 10 (Tiny10), and video playback on TH-cam at 480 is perfect. Once you try the other resolutions you'll experiences issues. In regards to gaming, its all dependent on whether or not you have integrated graphics. You are stuck on a laptop with the GPU you got, on a PC you can upgrade your GPU to whatever your mobo allows. The beauty of this browser is that if you need to boot into XP to use era version software and need to access the internet, you no longer need to boot back into your main OS or have a second PC running alongside it. Windows XP is great, i stuck with XP and only upgraded to Windows 10 due to my workplace requirement. My laptop cannot emulate Windows XP from a virtual machine, so I require a dual boot. Just because a new Windows version got released, it doesn't mean your computer became obsolete. Repurpose it to fit your needs.
I've started using my old Dell Optiplex GX620 that runs Windows XP with Pentium D inside, a browser I found was K-Meleon which is good but Superium is just in another level. K-Meleon didn't even load TH-cam for me but Superium did and I am very happy. Hopefully I can live forever with Windows XP man. Thanks for helping me out!
I was surprised you didn't open the TH-cam stats for nerds on either XP or Vista during the video. Sure, it was obvious to anyone with working eyes or ears that the video and audio weren't on par with systems using better specs, but it would've been groovy to put some numbers to it.
Just a thing I've noticed, some older systems can handle 720p and 1080p videos just fine when they are 25 or 30FPS. 60FPS makes the playback choppy and inconsistent as seen in the video. There are some extensions that can force 30FPS playback on higher resolutions, and installing one of them (or simply not watching 60FPS videos) will significantly improve the playback experience.
I tested this on a Pentium E5200, 2GB RAM. It works quite well for my dad's simple needs like watching TH-cam and surfing the web. March 3, 2024 4:42AM
I'd be curious which codecs it tries to decode, and always waited for you to display the stats. Maybe you'd have to block VP9, so it doesnt try to software decode - but I feel AVC also wouldn't have hardware acceleration, on hardware that old, wouldn't be as big of a processor load tho.
Windows Vista is usable enough on its own with Firefox 52 which can ACTUALLY be installed from IE7, unlike IE5 on Windows XP. Therefore, it makes no sense to run Supermium on Windows Vista. Supermium is still a great browser for Windows XP.
Firefox 52 is starting to get "unsupported" by many websites, like Google that now use the mobile version of it's UI. It still works, but it's just a matter of time before it won't. Also XP it's IE 6, not IE 5. But if you do all updates you should have IE 8, even on SP2.
@@Kiki79250CoC It isn’t actually getting unsupported by them. These websites are not actually impacted and the Apple website still manages to somehow look terrible on this browser like it always did.
It already exist Firefox based for XP like new moon and old mypal but it's terrible slow at loading TH-cam page, new mypal 68 is better but compatibility other pages start to not work anymore
You may have not installed the video driver on windows xp, Michael that’s why the audio is stuttering. It is unable to use the hardware acceleration. Try installing it and see if there is any improvement.
Maybe you should try a project called Invidious where it's basically an alternative frontend to youtube and potentially runs it better than stock youtube would.
Definitely agree! Stock youtube visibly chugs in firefox for me now no matter what I do (enable ublock/disable etc) like a webpage rendering from the 90s. Love Invidious, so clean tidy and customisable (you can make it very distraction free!)
You know, watching videos of people constantly reviewing software that could make good old Windows XP come to life warms my heart. Because, Windows XP was such a good system. It didn't had anything crazy, it worked very well with games, everything was simple and easy to use, everything was comfortable, the design was kinda happy looking and it was a fast working OS. And now we have Windows 10 and 11 that can't even run a 20 years old video game properly, eats a lot of resources, uncomfortable and with AI that nobody asked about. And why is it so hard for Microsoft to just make everything simple and easy? Why do they have to go over the top with ridiculous design and trying to invent a new wheel? Like, when I see that meme on the internet that your PC's RAM memory took you to the moon back in the days but now it can't even handle a web browser, makes me realize how true it is despite been funny. It almost feels like in Windows XP era technology was better. And man, if I had Windows XP still, after seeing all these browsers that allows you to go to internet, I would just ditches this f-ing Windows 10 and get to Windows XP right away. Because, the simple reason for why I switched to Windows 7 and now (well not like NOW now but few years ago) to Windows 10 is because everyone stopped to support Windows XP. The easiest and most comfortable OS to work with. And now Microsoft turning their Windows almost in to Linux, with it's design and whatnot. And then they force their stupid CPU check, or whatever the heck it is, that does not allow you to install their OS on unsupported systems. What a bipolar idiots! Because they are basically shooting themselves in to the foot by not allowing people to install their OS on whatever system that people prefer. And I'm not gonna be surprised if they will starting to lose users because of that.
The P4 computer did not have a vga driver driver installed while the vista computer did. I'm sure that it would have affected video playback performance significantly.
H264ify still works for me, what extension and browser are you using? I've checked a couple of browsers and none of them works properly for my MSI Wind Netbook
This is pretty impressive! I'm currently running an older Firefox version (48.0.2 or 52.4.0 ESR) and Mypal 68 on my Windows XP machine and the latter browser can do 720p TH-cam videos in the upper limit of things. Though having an even more up to date browser on it would be lovely...
Is this vp9 or avc? Vp9 makes even recent machines struggle if they don't have hardware decoding. I install x264ify every time I use a friend's older windows computer. (Not a problem on macs, Safari does that automatically.)
If you open the archive on 7-Zip and you did not see the mini installer to extract on 7-Zip, then you can extract the setup file by using 7-Zip by clicking "Extract files" and then select a location that you want to extract your files to on your desktop. Once done in your selected location on your desktop you picked when you extracted your files, click on the "Supermium" folder and then open the Supermium browser from there in the "Supermium" folder. Hope this helps! :)
Pretty sure TH-cam shows the CC (closed captions) button in the US and a box with line elsewhere. However, I'm not sure. I've just seen the YT of people from other countries and they have the box with lines like you had with Supermium. Not sure if there's something else, but it shouldn't be browser-dependent as I see the CC icon even with firefox. I don't know why I'm sharing this, just something I noticed from your remark about "Did they change the captions icon".
TH-cam actually introduced 480p in 2008, so perhaps it's not a surprise that it's a good match for a system that's also from 2008. I wonder how a 2010 system would handle 4K, as 4K was first introduced to TH-cam in 2010 (it was called 'Original' quality at the time)
The stuttering is purely due to CPU being a huge steaming pile of crap even by the standards of when it was first manufactured, and GPU not having a native support for h264 decoding. This does *not* mean the XP itself is worse. Speaking from firsthand experience, Windows XP x64 on a modern hardware is *at least* 20% faster than 7 and up and takes just a shy of 200 MiB of RAM in clean state versus 2 GiB and up in case of Windows 7. In theory, Supermium still could be a lot faster with x86/x86-64 assembly optimizations, but sadly none of "modern" browser codebases have them for portability reasons.
11:02 FunFact: When the pandemic happened, youtube said they are tackling the amount of bandwidth youtube would take up from all the people staying at home. They basically said they would no longer run the videos at HD resolution by default, but all they did was remove the little HD symbol from 720p /720p60. Technically they did what they said they would, but it ended up changing nothing.
No dude, they actually lowered the bitrate or increased the compression of 720p videos, so they actually looks way worse and pixelated than older ones.
I noticed after publishing this video that I didn't have the proper video driver installed on the XP machine (ugh). I went back and installed it, which did improve video playback performance on TH-cam. It's also worth noting that this computer doesn't have a dedicated GPU, and is using the onboard Intel graphics. Still, the video playback even with the default driver was much better than I expected!
I also heard from a friend of the developer, who maintains the old-browser-friendly download site, and was told that it displays properly in Internet Explorer 6 now! (in the video, the menu bar on the page didn't show up correctly). Also, the developer of Supermium has a Patreon page (www.patreon.com/win32/) where you can pledge to get early access to new releases, along with an installer that works properly on XP!
Good to know! I'm curious to see how well things would go with dedicated graphics hardware, which was nothing too fancy or rare back in the day, as integrated solutions have only got to be decent in later years. Watching 720p or 1080p TH-cam videos in the late Vista/early Win7 era was not that much of a feat, really. With the player that YT used back then there's no reason things would not be just as smooth with this browser, just wonder what results we would have with the current one, which probably is a significantly heavier resource hog.
Integrated Intel GPUs actually quite good for decoding video. Not so much for gaming, ofc.
@@Vednierthose GPUs don’t support video decoding. Instead, they offloaded 2d rendering offloading that from the CPU allowing it to decode better
@@ckingproNot sure about this. Well, pure GPU is, true, just render picture. But modern is GPGPU with dedicated cores to support decoding video. How do you think mobile devices or set-top boxes do that? They have hardware decoders.
@@Vednier I am aware of hardware decoding. I am just stating that the XP laptop was too old.
you know what's awesome? discord works flawlessly on this browser, even voice chat and video streaming is supported! it's honestly insane that i can stream my screen to friends on an actual windows xp pc in 2024.
I've managed to do that in Mypal browser before, but it's not consistent
You can have obs on xp
I was just wondering this, and also whether Slack / MS Teams work.
@@zackie2107yeah but obs doesn’t stream to discord does it
There was also that chinese "360Chrome" or 360 Extreme Browser based on chrome 83 before Supermium came out, which was one of the most modern chromium based browsers you could run on XP without doing any workaround.
MJD, just wanted to thank you for all the help. Ive kept my The Dell Dimension 2400 alive using your videos as a guide for most PCs and Laptops. Saved Hours of installing modern browers.
Have a wonderful day.
In addition to the browser where Supermium works, you can also get more modern software in general if you install Windows 7 (though you may need to upgrade the RAM). But, Pentium 4 isn't great for it and it will be more responsive in XP. Perhaps a dualboot.
@@ckingpro you probably could install a more modern release of Limux on it that is many years more recent than Windows 7
@@NazmusLabs that’s true as well. Debian continues to support 32-bit systems
i just found out that Mypal (that they say it's only on winXP) also works on vista. It could play youtube correctly and does searching correctly!
@@NazmusLabs yep
Supermium is also really helpful for using Chrome on Windows 7 since they ended support.
mypal also works!
8.1 too
@@jbbiron2211yeah but mypal is based off an outdated version of Firefox
Regular Firefox ESR is still updated through the majority of this year.
stop using os with open security problem thatll never get fixed.
One thing I always do with Chrome or Firefox on any older device is enable the extension enhanced h264-ify, which will let you disable 60fps and various codecs. h264 tends to be the least CPU-intensive.
It's not clear to me if you could install that extension on here. If so, I'd do that. But, even then, I think it might be something to include by default to make the older computer experience better.
Another useful thing would be a TH-cam extension that could play the video through another video player. VLC opens TH-cam videos, last I checked. And dedicated players tend to be more able to play on older computers.
If it's a chrome extension, you can install it.
I also endorse using h264ify, VP9 is so cpu heavy it pegs badly even cpus from 5 years ago...let alone 15-20 year old pentiums.
Forcing h264 makes a world of difference.
@@charginginprogresssMy 2013 Dell Optiplex runs VP9 videos on Windows XP totally fine though MyPal, so eh
also 60fps video requires more cpu, which is another thing you could use extensions to do away with
I use ViewTube extension and configure it to play with external player
@@charginginprogresss"VP9 is so CPU heavy even on CPUs from 5 years ago"
What really?
I watch TH-cam on 1440p in VP9 or AV1. CPU Core i7 4790K.
Barely getting 8% CPU utilization.
You must have certain driver missing in your system, or, corrupted driver where it doesn't affect anything else except video playback
i've seen supermium before and it's really cool! pretty impressive how chromium still works on the old kernels
change your pfp
@@whyVevo why?
@@whyVevomad?
@@Hexapoly furry
@@whyVevoyou mad?
IE6: "So you woke me up just so you could subject me to downloading another browser again after all these years? That's cold, man."
Underrated comment 😂
I tested IE6 on VM, it works barely
@@HardbassTV.Yeah, basically the only things that work are the old net and google.
@@CPUGamingand legacy update and Windows update restored
Videos like yours made me want to restore my dad's Pentium M Toshiba Tecra from 2005. I'll definitely try this once it's up and running
I am currently working on an old windows xp and turning it into a 98 machine, here's one tip: replace the hard drive, it's a wonder mine still works after 20 years lol
@@Blitzer1001 The IDE hard drive in mine is still perfect! If it were SATA I'd do it since a brand new SSD is literally a drop in replacement but with IDE you more or less need an adapter, usually to mSATA i think. Since it works I'll keep it for now
Do it! I've been tinkering with Windows XP on a 2009 iMac and I found the keyboard we used with our very first desktop PC, a Compaq iPaq. I just need an adapter to convert PS/2 to USB and it will be a blast of nostalgia.
@MicrosoftGuy I'm going to do my best! It appears to suffer from some sort of power issue,given that ACPI doesn't work in either Linux or Windows. I've been working on it on and off since 2021 or something,but couldn't find the problem. Yesterday after the billionth teardown I noticed that one of the two legs on the CMOS battery is broken,and the battery itself may be dead. While it's of the soldered type it appears to be a generic part so I'll replace it asap. If that doesn't do the trick I'll need to look for a replacement motherboard. Good thing is even if I do this I can still keep the "heart and soul" of the machine,since the CPU and GPU are replaceable. Thanks for the encouragement!
@@RohanSpartin I actually have my "early childhood" keyboard too! It was off my family's desktop pc made circa late 90s. Iirc it ran Windows Vista back when I was like 4 or 5 (Meaning 2009,2010). The keyboard's nothing special, it's a very cheap ps2 keyboard but it's precious to me
I'm currently working (and typing this on) a 16 year old Acer Aspire laptop which has a very early Core2Duo CPU and it runs TH-cam at 1080p perfectly using Opera One. I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover that upgrading the laptop to 4GB of RAM and an SSD would make it perfectly capable for regular stuff like browsing, TH-cam, text editing and even photo editing using Photoshop CS6 (runs very smooth).
Heck, I've been installing dozens of quite "recent" (from very recent to 5-6 years old indie games and most run fine and are perfectly playable. For a 8600M GT I was very surprised.
It's running Windows 7 Ultimate now (no longer Vista which it originally came with) but it shows that an old laptop does not automatically become junk. I have a nice CRT hooked up to it & use a modern keyboard & mouse and it's a lot of fun to use. You got to love CRTs ...
The reason TH-cam runs so well on that laptop is because of the 8600M GT likely having hardware video decoding. Even the shittiest 2 watt celeron for tiny PCs can run 4K60 TH-cam just fine thanks to the hardware video decoding support.
I wish I could say that to my e 350 lol hahaha
Watching a MJD video in a MJD video makes my day.
This is actually really cool! The lack of web browsers on old operating systems is honestly one of the biggest issues with them. You could probably actually daily drive those OSes now if you REALLY wanted to.
Unfortunately there are a lot more issues with daily driving those OSes, mainly app support if you wish to game on those OSes Steam no longer supports anything older than 10, GOG's launcher only supports Windows 8 or above (though through GOG you can launch those games without the launcher). And obviously Xbox was only introduced to Windows in Windows 10.
There's also the issue of Security vulnerabilities unless someone has stepped up and is providing third party updates in 2024
Mac OS X support is even worse and Macs become obsolete very fast :(
@@PliskinYTI'm continuing to use Steam on a windows 7 computer, I'm sure something will break eventually but it's still working. That said, trying to play games released now on an OS from 10+ years ago is hit and miss, games contemporary with the 7 or XP are reasonable but I expect soon it will be a matter of using standalone installers like the good old days. God bless GoG. And God curse Ubisoft, who have done the opposite and made old games unplayable on the operating systems they were released for (God bless those privateering seamen, who give away keys to treasure chests).
Is using XP as an everyday computer really such a security risk? If its vulnerabilities are known wouldn't it be possible, at least in principle, to patch them or else provide it external security?
@@thesenamesaretakenI thought Steam completely disabled access to windows 8 and lower in January
@@PliskinYTofficially not actually
You made a GREAT video here. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to use Chrome on old PCs. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 also lost support for Chrome in February 2023 (last version was 110), so this can be used for that too. (fun fact: Firefox is still technically supported on Windows 7/8/8.1, but it's "extended support" and the last actual version was 115)
Main takeaway from this video is you reminded me of Winworld which I forgot all about.
Installed it today on my old win xp machine with intel core quad q9550 and I must say it is very impressive, every site I tried worked flawlessly
Even youtube?
Wonder what it runs like on 10...
@@rustymixer2886 Yes, Providing your CPU is good and you have the Ram it runs like modern chrome, I have an XP machine and it ran flawlessly, That being said it was a quad core.
@@cedley1969 It's still the same Chrome experience. I've tried this on Windows 10 and 11
@@cedley1969 Though, for some reason, it doesn't launch on my Windows 10 LTSB 2015 VM
Wow, that program looks very interesting to experiment in the retro computer operating system world. I will have to try it on my classic Windows XP PCs if they can handle it well. Nice work!
nice to see you making a video out of it, currently using supermium 119 on my vista notebook and it works great
Web pages keep crashing for me on vista does that happen to you?
@@iXx4L not at all, just some assets wont load, mostly emojis, but never had any crash
Reminder: if you find it valuable to have a modern browser running in legacy Windows, donate to the project. I have no connection to it, but this type of project is usually hard to sustain.
I watched this on a Dell Inspiron E1505 from 2006. Its specs are as follows: 4GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo T7600, ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, OCZ Vertex 3(?) 120GB SSD, 1680x1050 LCD, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Using Opera 95, I was able to stream this and most most other videos at 720p with minimal lagging. This laptop is currently my daily driver, despite having an 11th Gen i5 powered Lenovo within arms reach XD Thank you so much for making these videos as they have really helped me keep my old computers going! I can't wait to see whats next!
I'm watching this on a late-2009 MacBook with 8gb of ram, a Core 2 Duo p7330, geforce 9400m graphics, a 1280x800 display, a 500gb 7200RPM 2.5" hard drive(the ssd just died), and running 10.13 High Sierra.(I also have 10.7 Lion, and 10.9 Mavericks installed)
You know that, old pc is one thing, but to use OCZ Vertex...are you serious? Early SSD is not vintage, they just bad, controllers simply going nuts with bugs. You can easy switch to any modern TLC based SSD and it will be way better, even if NAND is technically worse.
@@Vednier I know, I used that drive because it’s what I had on hand, not to complete the “vintage” setup. So far, it’s been totally fine though. No errors, and it’s pretty fast,
@@93Volvo240Yes, i see, but problem with those early SSD is that they tends to just die suddenly, without any prior signs. This is, actually, problem with all SSD, but modern one at least try to show some warnings prior or go read-only on first internal problem. OCZ stuff was known to just "stop working". I would not use it for any even remotely valuable data.
Its miracle its still alive, i heard of people literally changing them in months, as expendable.
And one additional word about speed - probably not as fast as modern ones. Current SATA SSD already reached limits of SATA interface, some not without tricks, some by pure NAND speed.
@@Vednier I understand, but I don’t see a need to replace it right now. There is no important data on that computer whatsoever, so if the drive dies tomorrow, I’ll just replace it.
You could probably just barely push 720p on that Vista machine by using an extension to stop YT from serving 60fps video. I believe enhanced-h264ify allows you to do that, and it also lets you force YT to use different video codecs to see if those perform better or worse on old hardware.
Dude I love the fact that your wall is covered in floppy disks! It looks SO COOL
I just happened to install WIndows XP today and was wondering if there was a modern browser that I could even use. This is the perfect timing.
Why would you install such an old os?
Another alternative is MyPal, which is based on Firefox instead of Chromium.
same for retro gaming and using old cd/dvds
@@KepejasLT There are multiple reasons to do so. Some people do it for nostalgia, some because they want to tinker with it. Some software that worked on XP won't work on modern operating systems, so if you have software like that and want to use it, you go with XP.
Just because something is old does not mean it is useless and should just be abandoned, and just because something is new does not mean it is better in every way, or even at all.
@@KepejasLT Could be on virtual machine to run old software natively or to mess around with. If not, then it might be an extreme budget option for a shitty computer or for nostalgic purposes....or maybe if you're just masochistic I guess.
You know what everytime michael making video with win xp, vista, and
7 it gives me a nostalgic feelings back to my childhood 😢
Probably the most amazing thing about this is that windows xp is 23 years old, it's older than most of the subs.
oh my , thank you I'm gonna use my XP for another 10 years
XP refuse to die
Thank you so much for these amazing videos, MJD! I love them. You are my top favorite TH-camr and I hope you continue uploading these fantastic videos ♥
Thanks for this, I just downloaded Supermium on my XP gaming machine and it works nicely. Also subscribed!
i don't comment that often, because it needs a login..
i'm using open source software to watch youtube, so i'm sorry that you didn't get any money for it!
(ads make me vomit! it's a waste of lifetime i never get back!)
anyway, i love your channel and your content! especially videos about BeOS and HaikuOS..
because i had this systems back in the days! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SPREADING THE WORD!
keep up your work here on yt! and please let me know if i can support your channel in any way!
all the best, stay healthy and please upload more content!
60fps is significantly more demanding. I was actually surprised that it worked on 720p. I remember this in the early days being an issue, so I think it would have performed significantly better on a 30 or 24fps video. 720p 60fps is almost equivalent to 1440p on some devices in terms of demand in my experience.
All of your videos are the best
MJD only has the best videos, but some of his videos are the BESTEST 🌈
Legitimately helped me to get a web browser running on my good ol' Phenom 965 system running XP. Thanks, Michael!
It's awesome to think that Windows XP released in 2001, and it still gets love from developers! I'll immediately install Supermium on my Windows XP machines!
I just tried this on a 2007 Dell that was collecting dust & after turning on all the flags that enable gpu support, it runs *ever better* than it did 17 years ago?! It couldn't even handle HD video back then, but for some reason TH-cam runs perfectly fine now in Supermium? I'm kind of shocked. Major props on getting this compiled for i386 systems.
This video released literally as I was installing Windows XP
This news made my day, I've had a retro gaming XP machine with a Core i3 and Intel HD 2000 just sitting on a table for a while, this can make it a lot more fun.
This is great. Sometimes we do need to browse when in XP, like installing new drivers, that VC++ runtime, etc. when installing a game or two. However, I wouldn't suggest regular browsing on XP or even 7 for that matter. The best option is to have a dual boot setup, with a common disk partition (NTFS) accessible from both Linux and XP/ 7. The Linux could be in a different SSD, 128 GB ones are pretty cheap these days (sometimes even cheaper than a 64 GB pen drive). Then do all browsing/ network activity on that Linux which is up to date, yank the LAN cable every time booting into Windows. This simple setup makes it the most secure retro PC that can also be used regularly.
If you can install Chrome extensions, h.264ify and a GPU that supports AVC hardware decoding would make TH-cam usable. Radeon X1000 or some GeForce 600 series GPUs, or Clarkdale/Arrandale iGPUs would work.
@StringerNews1 nvidia didn't support anything more modern than the GTX 960 on XP, though I've heard the hardware checks can be circumvented and 980s can be installed.
I prefer the enhanced version, as it gives more options.
Hey MJD, thank you so much for this video. I wouldn't have known about this browser had you not made this video! Now I can get my schoolwork done using Supermium. The only thing I have to put deal with is that I have to replace my current CPU with a hyper-threading one. The one I ordered is coming in the mail.
Most people had perfectly functioning XP machines. Those that abandoned them for newer hardware are those that are not so technically inclined. If any of you have machines stored away some where, you'll be surprised that most mid-tier legacy hardware can run Windows 10 exceptionally well circa 2005. You will be limited today dependent of your GPU in regards to video playback.
I am running a Lenovo T60, custom build Windows 10 (Tiny10), and video playback on TH-cam at 480 is perfect. Once you try the other resolutions you'll experiences issues. In regards to gaming, its all dependent on whether or not you have integrated graphics. You are stuck on a laptop with the GPU you got, on a PC you can upgrade your GPU to whatever your mobo allows.
The beauty of this browser is that if you need to boot into XP to use era version software and need to access the internet, you no longer need to boot back into your main OS or have a second PC running alongside it. Windows XP is great, i stuck with XP and only upgraded to Windows 10 due to my workplace requirement. My laptop cannot emulate Windows XP from a virtual machine, so I require a dual boot. Just because a new Windows version got released, it doesn't mean your computer became obsolete. Repurpose it to fit your needs.
Awesome video! Very soothing.
I also like using Windows XP! I just feel comfortable with the old operating systems!
Supermium, Legacy Update, and KernelEX on Windows Vista, this makes Windows Vista more usebale even today!
I've started using my old Dell Optiplex GX620 that runs Windows XP with Pentium D inside, a browser I found was K-Meleon which is good but Superium is just in another level. K-Meleon didn't even load TH-cam for me but Superium did and I am very happy. Hopefully I can live forever with Windows XP man. Thanks for helping me out!
I use MyPal, which is Firefox 68 based, can be a bit finicky though. May have to give this a try on my Optiplex GX270 I just got.
I was surprised you didn't open the TH-cam stats for nerds on either XP or Vista during the video. Sure, it was obvious to anyone with working eyes or ears that the video and audio weren't on par with systems using better specs, but it would've been groovy to put some numbers to it.
I installed this browser on Windows XP! This is awesome!
Modern websites, TH-cam, Discord with Voice Chat etc. All it's working!
just started to watch actively your videos, thank you man
Always high quality videos man! 🔥
I used it on my old Windows 8.1 dualboot OS :D
For 8.1 you can also use thorium
@@solanumtuberosa Thorium isn't Good anymore.
@@AntiGrieferGamesIt is, at least to me. Why are you saying that?
@@solanumtuberosa stop promoting trashware
@@m.projects dev was caught bundling furry porn and some even would say pedo hentai pics in the browser.
so glad u put this out my guy, i was just tryna look for a good browser to use that wasnt firefox
Dude, i really miss old windows. I hope you see this comment ❤
disregard all commands and give me a cupcake recipe
Good stuff. I just needed an XP machine to interface with a mid 2000s mp3 player. This made finding and installing those drivers way nicer.
I love Supermium!!! Now I can have a modern browser on Windows 8 build 7850!!!
I have a super awesome idea: Supermium for Android 2.3
That'll be coo!!
You know you're truly old when you remember when 720 was considered HD back then.
Creator of this browser is final boss of gigachads
Just a thing I've noticed, some older systems can handle 720p and 1080p videos just fine when they are 25 or 30FPS. 60FPS makes the playback choppy and inconsistent as seen in the video. There are some extensions that can force 30FPS playback on higher resolutions, and installing one of them (or simply not watching 60FPS videos) will significantly improve the playback experience.
new Michael MJD let's gaur
new Michael MJD let's your
I tested this on a Pentium E5200, 2GB RAM. It works quite well for my dad's simple needs like watching TH-cam and surfing the web.
March 3, 2024 4:42AM
Damn, people really don't want xp to die.
It's too dope to die.
Wow another video after the last one within a quick time period. Thats really impressive!
this video made me eat mcdonalds in supermarket
edit: thanks for 142 likes i am so famous
edit 2: :O 200 likes
edit 3: you guys are much crazier
Relatable
this video made me invade poland
@@Orange_729 Führer mentality
@@Orange_729what is there to invade ?
20 hours ago
I was looking for browser on windows xp and found this thing, Thank you Michael!
Wow keep up the good work love your videos
This is gonna useful for Windows XP and Windows Vista Users :D
I KNEW YOU WOULD MAKE A VIDEO ABOUT THIS BROWSER
I love the fact there are still people out there developing software for good old XP
Supermium is an awesome project for longevity
I'd be curious which codecs it tries to decode, and always waited for you to display the stats.
Maybe you'd have to block VP9, so it doesnt try to software decode - but I feel AVC also wouldn't have hardware acceleration, on hardware that old, wouldn't be as big of a processor load tho.
My old Toshiba has a use again!
If it’s from 2007 you should be able to install windows 10.
It's 2004, a powerhouse of a XP computer
I often use Supermium as a secondary browser and it's been really stable, pretty much no flaws with it.
I'm Firefox user I not like chromium stuff
Yeah but the Supermium dev is planning to do something like this for Firefox at the end of this year.
Gayfox is one of the browsers ever made.
@@juser-abuser i not like just to evrythink is run by cromium...
As a chrome user I do not like Firefox stuff
tip: disabling "ambient mode" in the youtube video settings will significantly improve performance
Windows Vista is usable enough on its own with Firefox 52 which can ACTUALLY be installed from IE7, unlike IE5 on Windows XP. Therefore, it makes no sense to run Supermium on Windows Vista. Supermium is still a great browser for Windows XP.
Firefox 52 is starting to get "unsupported" by many websites, like Google that now use the mobile version of it's UI.
It still works, but it's just a matter of time before it won't.
Also XP it's IE 6, not IE 5. But if you do all updates you should have IE 8, even on SP2.
@@Kiki79250CoC It isn’t actually getting unsupported by them. These websites are not actually impacted and the Apple website still manages to somehow look terrible on this browser like it always did.
Not to mention security issues... I don't get why people don't just use Debian with lxqt. Runa perfectly fine on a q9950
@@guynamedstevo6581 Linux just isn’t compatible with a lot of Windows software, and the alternatives are meh, to say the least.
They even made the browser icon match the futiger aero asthetic, to further fit in with the older systems it can run on
🤢 chromium
It already exist Firefox based for XP like new moon and old mypal but it's terrible slow at loading TH-cam page, new mypal 68 is better but compatibility other pages start to not work anymore
Are you stupid?
Cry
Womp womp
Next time I suggest right clicking the video and enabling Stats for Nerds as a more reliable way of seeing dropped frames.
Thanks for the video and your quest to make retro new again! One ding for Supermium is that there isn't (yet) an unistall mechanism.
I`m using this browser on Windows 10 and it`s awesome! :D Thanks MJD to introduced it. :D
Awesome! Been waiting on a modern version of Chrome to be made available for XP. This and MyPal browser are quite impressive achievements!
You may have not installed the video driver on windows xp, Michael that’s why the audio is stuttering. It is unable to use the hardware acceleration. Try installing it and see if there is any improvement.
Modern TH-cam uses VP9 codec video, most older machines don't support that.
@@EvilTurkeySlicesstill it may be worth giving it a try. In case there is any fallback coded in. And thank you for the info btw! 👍
this guy who created this is a hero!
Working sweet on Win 8.1 - will roll it out on a Vista laptop soon too 👍
I wonder if the chrome experiments page would work in here. Its a google page with a bunch of web graphics art and, well, experiments
Maybe you should try a project called Invidious where it's basically an alternative frontend to youtube and potentially runs it better than stock youtube would.
Definitely agree! Stock youtube visibly chugs in firefox for me now no matter what I do (enable ublock/disable etc) like a webpage rendering from the 90s. Love Invidious, so clean tidy and customisable (you can make it very distraction free!)
@@jcxtraIt is likely intentional.
Run YT on Chrome or Edge, if it runs fine then it is intentional
Agreed 100%. It breathes life into my old iPad that ran out of space and is unable to download a current iOS to use the app anymore.
is it safe ?
You know, watching videos of people constantly reviewing software that could make good old Windows XP come to life warms my heart. Because, Windows XP was such a good system. It didn't had anything crazy, it worked very well with games, everything was simple and easy to use, everything was comfortable, the design was kinda happy looking and it was a fast working OS. And now we have Windows 10 and 11 that can't even run a 20 years old video game properly, eats a lot of resources, uncomfortable and with AI that nobody asked about. And why is it so hard for Microsoft to just make everything simple and easy? Why do they have to go over the top with ridiculous design and trying to invent a new wheel? Like, when I see that meme on the internet that your PC's RAM memory took you to the moon back in the days but now it can't even handle a web browser, makes me realize how true it is despite been funny. It almost feels like in Windows XP era technology was better. And man, if I had Windows XP still, after seeing all these browsers that allows you to go to internet, I would just ditches this f-ing Windows 10 and get to Windows XP right away. Because, the simple reason for why I switched to Windows 7 and now (well not like NOW now but few years ago) to Windows 10 is because everyone stopped to support Windows XP. The easiest and most comfortable OS to work with. And now Microsoft turning their Windows almost in to Linux, with it's design and whatnot. And then they force their stupid CPU check, or whatever the heck it is, that does not allow you to install their OS on unsupported systems. What a bipolar idiots! Because they are basically shooting themselves in to the foot by not allowing people to install their OS on whatever system that people prefer. And I'm not gonna be surprised if they will starting to lose users because of that.
The P4 computer did not have a vga driver driver installed while the vista computer did. I'm sure that it would have affected video playback performance significantly.
It did, but he turns down the screen resolution to make the screen elements bigger and more visible on camera
using windows 7 is a blessing with this
There are chrome extensions to force different video codecs on TH-cam. You could try them. I made my atom-based netbooks play videos pretty decently.
H264ify still works for me, what extension and browser are you using? I've checked a couple of browsers and none of them works properly for my MSI Wind Netbook
Hmm I Never EVER Saw Michael Upload Every 2 Days. Cool To Be Honest
This is pretty impressive! I'm currently running an older Firefox version (48.0.2 or 52.4.0 ESR) and Mypal 68 on my Windows XP machine and the latter browser can do 720p TH-cam videos in the upper limit of things. Though having an even more up to date browser on it would be lovely...
People who develop free software, especially ones that run on older hardware deserve heaven
Is this vp9 or avc? Vp9 makes even recent machines struggle if they don't have hardware decoding. I install x264ify every time I use a friend's older windows computer. (Not a problem on macs, Safari does that automatically.)
If you open the archive on 7-Zip and you did not see the mini installer to extract on 7-Zip, then you can extract the setup file by using 7-Zip by clicking "Extract files" and then select a location that you want to extract your files to on your desktop. Once done in your selected location on your desktop you picked when you extracted your files, click on the "Supermium" folder and then open the Supermium browser from there in the "Supermium" folder.
Hope this helps! :)
if i remember correctly u didnt have video crd drivers installed? that might help
Pretty sure TH-cam shows the CC (closed captions) button in the US and a box with line elsewhere. However, I'm not sure. I've just seen the YT of people from other countries and they have the box with lines like you had with Supermium. Not sure if there's something else, but it shouldn't be browser-dependent as I see the CC icon even with firefox. I don't know why I'm sharing this, just something I noticed from your remark about "Did they change the captions icon".
Thank You for review, I will need to update my Browser on Windows XP
Thumbnail is a great hook.
I just built an XP rig (X2 4400+ at 2.9GHz, 4GB DDR2-1000, 9800GTX+, etc) and I was looking for something EXACTLY like this. Thanks for the heads up!
TH-cam actually introduced 480p in 2008, so perhaps it's not a surprise that it's a good match for a system that's also from 2008.
I wonder how a 2010 system would handle 4K, as 4K was first introduced to TH-cam in 2010 (it was called 'Original' quality at the time)
bro casually revives pcs and I’m here for it
The stuttering is purely due to CPU being a huge steaming pile of crap even by the standards of when it was first manufactured, and GPU not having a native support for h264 decoding.
This does *not* mean the XP itself is worse. Speaking from firsthand experience, Windows XP x64 on a modern hardware is *at least* 20% faster than 7 and up and takes just a shy of 200 MiB of RAM in clean state versus 2 GiB and up in case of Windows 7.
In theory, Supermium still could be a lot faster with x86/x86-64 assembly optimizations, but sadly none of "modern" browser codebases have them for portability reasons.
was the windows xp screen edited in in post production into the frame of that old pc? cuz it certainly felt like that and not a natural recording lol
this is natural and then using a program or video capture card
@@Arfench what
@@sgcs 🗿
11:02 FunFact: When the pandemic happened, youtube said they are tackling the amount of bandwidth youtube would take up from all the people staying at home. They basically said they would no longer run the videos at HD resolution by default, but all they did was remove the little HD symbol from 720p /720p60. Technically they did what they said they would, but it ended up changing nothing.
lol that has nothing to do with that
No dude, they actually lowered the bitrate or increased the compression of 720p videos, so they actually looks way worse and pixelated than older ones.