Old laptop, win 7??

Isn't the best rig for win 7, but maybe is enough for 32 bits edition.

I you are running vista, it ought to run windows 7 better. Why dont you drop another $30 into 2 more gig of memory (while you are at it)

7 will technically run on that laptop. It won't be blazingly fast, but if you drop $30 on some more RAM for it, you should be ok.

I'm successfully typing this on a Win7 laptop with much worse specs than that! 1.5 GHz single-core CPU, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD, integrated graphics that can't even handle Aero. You get the picture. Surprisingly, it is a pretty smooth experience. The OS runs great, though of course some more resource-intensive programs stutter. I recommend adding another 1 GB of RAM in your case, though. It will definitely help. Instead of doing that, I used a flash drive I had laying around for Readyboost. I found that helped my performance. But yes, I would say go for Win7.

If you already have Vista, put the money towards extra memory instead. The extra ram will help not just the OS overall performace, but apps too.