Mum given old laptop, what version of Windows and how to get the most from it?

[Richeh]

Hello,
My mum has been given an old laptop by a friend, its her first ever computer so she doesn't need anything too demanding from it and will mostly just start with web browsing, maybe watching a dvd or 2, bit of word processing and other general stuff.

I had a quick look at the spec:

Its an Asus, 1.8GHz Sempron, 60GB hard drive and 384MB Ram. I knew instantly the tiny amount of RAM would make general navigating a bit of a chore so am looking to get the laptop running as quick as possible for her so have a few questions.

It's currently running XP sp3, is this the best option? As the laptop is a good few years old it would seem likely this is the best option but I have heard Windows 7 runs well on low specs but am thinking 384MB is a little too low spec.

Am planning on installing firefox, is this the best bet or is IE less of a system hog as I notice firefox uses a fair amount of memory on my laptop with 4GB RAM.

Any other general tweaks will be helpful, i'm reasonably computer savvy but haven't really kept up to date for years and never had such a poor computer I had to desperately tweak lol

Cheers.

 

[Richeh]

Thanks for all the replies.

Although I am sure Linux would give better performance I have no experience in it and it won't be very easy for me to show her the basics as I won't know myself!

I will get the laptop back to mine within the next week and will try and see what kind of memory it carries (Any recommended programs?), if its available locally i'll try and up it to 1-2GB depending on the motherboards limitation. Unfortunately, just don't have the funds to buy her a new one!

Will take a look at Chrome in the meantime.

Thanks for all the replies.