Too bad the only lap top I own only runs windows 98, I don't think it can run the arduino IDE.
I got it running on a 10 years old Acer Aspire with Windows 2K and 128mb. You can download an old version of JAVA here (apperently current versions don't support 98 and ME): http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/archive-139210.html, if that laptop doesn't have JAVA.