Linux the way to go?

[iviv]

My brother's laptop is old, about 6 years old now. 1.8Ghz Celron, 1Gb ram and a GO5650 graphics card. And the hard drive has died as well. After looking around, I can pick a replacement IDE laptop hard drive up for £40, but for just 80Gb that's awful value for money.

But what alternatives are there? I know you can run live linux installs off a cd or flash drive, is this an option? Then use the £40 I'd have spent on a hard drive to buy a larger external drive for him to keep all his music and files on?
Though if I were to do this, would it better to run linux off the drive instead?

I'm a total linux newbie, been happy with windows so never felt the need to try it, but I'm guessing installing windows on a usb hard drive would be rather slow. And if I did go with this option, what would be the best distro to use? He only really uses his laptop to listen to music, mess around with his ipod and blackberry, and chat with friends on MSN, with a little gaming, but not too much. So a simple interface would be preferable, he just wants something that works.

Thanks in advance!

 

[iviv]

Would you be able to run windows xp off an external drive at any decent speed?

I'm about to try damn small linux, to see if that's any good, since I just realised that with only one CD drive, he wouldn't be able to do anything that needed a CD if he was running a live CD, would he?

 

[iviv]

I picked DSL just because it was a small download to start with, and I could poke about with some things. It worked fine, though because of a hardware fault (The annoying nipple mouse is broken) I've had to set the bios to disable them when a usb moouose is preasent, so if I use linux it seems I have to do that (In windows, you have to install the touchpad drivers to disable it).

Anyway, the main problem seemed to be wireless. The laptops have Intel PRO Wireless 2200BG cards, if that helps. I'm going to try downloading ubunto, hopefully that will come with enough drivers to cover it. Thanks for the help so far! And I'll look into getting XP installed onto my hard drive instead, that would be handy.

 

[iviv]

Find a cheaper HD, install XP and be done with it.

No itunes on Linux. No games. Syncing mobiles is shakey. MSN file transfers are iffy too.
Insurmountable obstacles? Not really, but I doubt he will put up with them. Plus you are of no use in terms of Linux technical support for him.

Are second hand 'bay hard drives worth looking at then? I don't think I'm going to find a new drive for much cheaper than that. Its IDE, and obviously 2.5" form. OcUK's cheapest is £50!

And yes, ideally I would like to avoid linux since we don't know anything about it, but I'm just trying to check out all my options.

To be honest, I'm not sure how much time he spends gaming anyway, I think its mainly used just for chatting on MSN, so I was planning on getting him using pidgin, firefox (which he uses anyway), one of the linux itunes alternatives, and that should be most things sorted, though the remaining problem would be the blackberry. I know even less about these than linux though!

The reason I'm not looking at spending too much is that he's training for the Royal Marines, so the time he spends at home is very limited. I do have a WD 500Gb external drive which I'm considering using to stick windows on, as in the above link. Though can you boot from USB devices with a dell D800?

Thanks!

 

[iviv]

There's no way to install apps onto a live CD, is there? I mean, as long as there's a way for him to play with his ipod music (which I have on my external drive anyway), and use MSN he'll be happy. So if I could get a live CD with an itunes replacement on it, he'd be fine, then he could use my pc if he needs to do things with his blackberry.