Compaq Presario C500 - help?

[welshdragon]

I'm about to inherit a Compaq Presario C500. It belonged to my mother and I have just sorted her a new laptop for no other reason than this one is dog slow. Its running Vista and the ram has bene upgraded to 4gb I think.

Gonna keep it just for browsing and the odd office document. Can anyone tell me how to get the best out of it? Fresh vista install or perhaps a daliance with linux.

Never used linux before. Will it speed things up just for browsing/word processing? Can anyone recommend a build to use with little fuss and reasonably nice gui?

Specs:

Intel Celeron M Processor speed1.73 GHz (single core)

80gb hd

Natural resolution (max)1280 x 800 pixelsDiagonal screen size15.4 inch

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950Amt of video RAMShared up to 128 MB

Vista Home Basic

Its been barely used by my parents in is literally as new with hardly any on time.

 

[beermonster]

Windows 7 would probably get the best out of it, I put 7 on an old sony with the same processor and it was quite a bit nippier.

 

[andy_mk3]

Fresh install will work wonders. Vista will be fine or W7 even better if you have a copy about.

 

[welshdragon]

Cool cheers guys. Gonna download a vanilla vista iso and try that. May just restore fomr the recovery partition but don't want all the dross installed.