patchouli

Hello everyone, and happy holidays. You could probably tell from my post count that I am new here. I want to join the shrinking(?) number of users who use Windows 98 still today because I find that modern Windows is going in the wrong direction. I think something that changed a lot in recent years with Windows is that Microsoft has started to go overboard with adding features and trying to make everything too easy for casual users. The problem is, at least for me, that I no longer feel I am in "control" of my OS. Windows 7 is so huge and there are so many functions that it is no longer possible to keep on top. In Windows 98, I still felt that I had complete control over my PC. I also feel that at least for my daily work, Windows 98 is totally sufficient. It's extremely light-weight and fast. In Windows 7, even with a SSD, 8GB RAM, and Core i7 CPU, it's feeling a bit sluggish and overweight. (Bonus for me: I am learning Japanese full-time at Japanese language school, but I find that I am lazy with kanji because Windows 7 IME support is so good. It could help in my studies to use a old IME where it depends on user's knowledge! Kind of like doing math in your head instead of with calculator...) Anyway, enough rambling. I read a lot of the posts here, but because there is so much information and threads, I am super confused. I want to run Windows 98 SE on a ThinkPad R32. Thankfully, drivers are no problem. IBM driver support for older models is legendary. There is a driver for all hardware. The specs are 512 MB RAM, 60GB HDD, 1.4GHz CPU, ATI graphics card, some AC97 sound. Windows 98 SE should feel very at home on this system. Even the battery is still at good capacity and there is a hibernate partition maker utility! But can someone confirm this: - For updates: I am totally covered if I just install "U98SESP3 - Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack Updates", right? - For IE6 updates: Once IE6SP1 is installed, I just install "MDIE6CU 3.4" to be fully patched right? (I intend to use Opera later) I later intend to install 98SE2ME and KernelEx to improve stability get recent programs running. Any other suggestions? For basic toolkit: - There is no more free, small AV that supports Win 9x right? I am more than happy to use common sense as an alternative! - Is there a full disk encryption for Win 9x like TrueCrypt (password before disk is unlocked and Windows boots)? - What is a good personal firewall for Win 9x? I remember there was one called something like "Sibase? Personal Firewall" many years ago, but I can't find it. Any suggestions? Software I intend to run: Forte Agent, Opera, Office XP + Japanese IME, Winamp, IrfanView, Remote Desktop Client, PPTP VPN, and maybe OpenVPN. I am very willing to make sacrifices, and very thankful for tips and suggestions. I tried to search older threads (e.g. for encryption) but most of the results had links to software that didn't do what I want, or it no longer existed, etc. Thank you for your help and sorry for this long post.