anotherengineer wrote:The hardware is pretty old so driver support should be ok? Radeon HD 3850, an old A64 4600+, 2GB DDR400 ram, etc. (Just the HP inkjet the concerns me) Have a spare win7 x64 key, but I have concerns it might slow down the system even more.
I'm typing this from an A64 3700+ (3gb ram, 6850, mechanical HD). You're right to be concerned about Win7 performance. It's rough enough that your mom would find herself clicking on things several times, wondering if she mis-clicked the first time or if perhaps she did something wrong. The machine is barely usable if you keep in mind that you must be patient with the latency between user input and something visible happening.
In January of last year I decommissioned my mother-in-law's Dell 4700 P4 (3ghz, 3gb, 120gb SSD). Replacing their mechanical drive with an SSD made a huge difference when I did it in late 2011, but even with the SSD, you could feel the processor holding back Chrome in the Windows environment.
I recently did an upgrade from Win7 to Win10 on a C2D E4500 (4gb RAM, 5770, 256gb SSD). It ran Win10 nicely, and had no difficulty playing older games at 1080p on the main screen and YouTube videos & TaskManager on the second screen. The second core, more efficient architecture, and SSD make a huge difference.
Based on my recent experience with hardware that brackets the performance of yours, I think you'd find that the A64-4600+ with an SSD would run Win7 (or Win10) poorly enough that your mom would be frustrated from time to time. It would work, but it wouldn't be a good idea.
anotherengineer wrote:She only uses it for surfing the net (email, facebook and Sears lol)
Just wondering if I should get a small 128GB SSD and put on XP or try out Linux? This will also be my first time attempting a Linux install, been a walled in windows user for life.
I put Mint 17.2 (Cinnamon) on my mother-in-law's old cannibalized Dell 4700 P4 (3ghz, 1.5gb RAM, 80gb mechanical, Intel graphics) and played with it for browsing. It worked nicely, felt responsive, and had enough oomph to not struggle with Youtube.
During use, the system touches the hard drive very often, but it didn't feel like the nearly constant fiddling that Windows seems to do on the same machine.
anotherengineer wrote:Do any of you primary Linux users run any protection on your desktop or not required like a windows box??
Any advice appreciated.
Thanks
My advice is to remove the mechanical drive from your mom's machine, get an SSD, install Mint on it, and see how she likes it. It's a little bit different looking, but if she's already using Chrome, then Chrome on Mint will be familiar enough that she won't have any problems.
If the experiment fails, you're left with an SSD that you can re-purpose, and you still have your mom's XP installation on the mechanical drive as a fall-back.
