Will Linux boost an old laptop?

[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? Ubuntu?

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.

 

[welshdragon]

Cheers for the reply guys. Will try a fresh vista install with out all the unnecessary compaq crap first.

I assume I can switch to a 64bit install using the same key as I don't think its currently 64bit and thus not making full use of the available memory.

Failing that I like the look of Ubuntu and the unity interface so may give that a go.

 

[welshdragon]

Cheers for the replies guys. Gonna reinstall vista with a clean copy from 'mydigitallife' and go from there. Will ahve a play in the bios too see if I can allocate the gpu more memory etc

Worth a punt as I only need it for web and the odd office doc.