Hello James, On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:25:06 +1100, James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
I'm now thinking I should just install Linux on the IDE drive and see how it performs.
That's probably a better starting point. What are the specs of your inherited laptop? I have an inherited HP IDE-era laptop that still performs pretty well. The Ethernet is fried on it, and the IDE disk sometimes fails to detect on boot. 1680x1050 resolution though - it would have been a pretty expensive unit when it was new.
My Acer has a core-2-duo T5600 (1.83GHz), 4GB ram, 120GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 7300, 1280x800 It's not a bad little unit, a bit slow starting Win XP, but will probably be better with a suitable linux. I'm still thinking about a distro, and have recently installed Mint 13 and Manjaro in Virtualbox on my main system, to get a feel. Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell