Donating PC-need advice

[amdphenomkde]

Hi, my grandpa wants to donate his old PC, a Dell Inspiron 6000, to an assisted living facility where he volunteers. However, the hard drive it came with died (the computer is in perfect condition otherwise). It only supports IDE drives, not SATA, so the hard drive choices are all pretty small, which is ok. I'm going to Micro Center with him tomorrow to look at their refurbished selection, and they have 20, 30, 40 and 80 GB hard drives in stock. They should all be compatible with his computer, but is 20 GB enough for Windows XP SP3? He doesn't want to spend much money on it. The original hard drive was 60 GB and had plenty of room to spare, including all the bloatware the computer came with, which I will uninstall. Or should I put a Linux distro on it? It has 512 MB of RAM, which ran XP reasonably well, but hiccuped every now and then. MC has DDR2 1GB sticks for $7.99 refurbished, and I might advise my grandpa to get one or two of those if you guys think it's necessary. Please keep in mind it will just be for old people to use for internet and typing.

Here are the hard drives I'm considering from MC: http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?N=4294945772+4294963424+4294943164&cat=0001%3C%3E%3C%3EIDE-(PATA)-%3a-2.5%22-%3a-Internal-Hard-Drives-%3a-Hard-Drives-%26-Data-Storage-%3a-Computer-Parts-%3a-Micro-Center

specs for this computer: Intel Pentium M 1.6 GHz (single core)
512 MB DDR2-533
ATi Mobility Radeon 128MB
Windows XP Home Edition (but open to Linux as well)

Thanks!

 

[spongecake]

If he only uses the PC for things like web browsing, checking email,
youtube, etc, then Linux is the way to go for sure. The added security is
a massive bonus, and the fact that you can set it up so he is NOT the root
user, is a big bonus because it makes it very very difficult to "break something".
XP SP3 will run just fine on a 20gb drive. The 512 ram however will absolutely
affect how fast it is running hence why I reccomend linux. For ease of use, I
would highly reccomend either Ubuntu, or openSuse. If he is really used to
Windows, I would recomend openSuse as it is very user friendly and is layed
out somewhat similar to windows (including start menu) and usually comes with
everything you need out of the box. The software manager and updates are all
done really easy through a GUI (command line can be used). Ubuntu does this as
well, so its really up to you. I installed opensuse for my grandparents (they never owned
a windows pc previously) and they love it. They also find that when they use a friend's
windows PC, they know that navigating to what they need is almost the same.

 

[amdphenomkde]

If he only uses the PC for things like web browsing, checking email,
youtube, etc, then Linux is the way to go for sure. The added security is
a massive bonus, and the fact that you can set it up so he is NOT the root
user, is a big bonus because it makes it very very difficult to "break something".
XP SP3 will run just fine on a 20gb drive. The 512 ram however will absolutely
affect how fast it is running hence why I reccomend linux. For ease of use, I
would highly reccomend either Ubuntu, or openSuse. If he is really used to
Windows, I would recomend openSuse as it is very user friendly and is layed
out somewhat similar to windows (including start menu) and usually comes with
everything you need out of the box. The software manager and updates are all
done really easy through a GUI (command line can be used). Ubuntu does this as
well, so its really up to you. I installed opensuse for my grandparents (they never owned
a windows pc previously) and they love it. They also find that when they use a friend's
windows PC, they know that navigating to what they need is almost the same.

Thanks for the quick reply! He's donating the computer, not keeping it for himself. But thank you for your insight on Linux. That's a good point about Linux and particularly openSUSE. I haven't used openSUSE much but I've used Kubuntu a good deal and it's pretty similar since they both use KDE by default. I think I will install Windows first and then put Mint or Kubuntu on it, with about a 5 GB partition. I know Windows (especially XP) is clunkier than Linux, but I don't know if there are graphics drivers for a computer this old, so I want to have a backup plan if the residents of the assisted living facility want to watch videos, etc. But yeah I agree about the added security, like no need for antivirus and the root user. Combining computer-illiterate people and the C:\WINDOWS folder can be a disaster, not to mention the registry. Thanks again.

 

[amdphenomkde]

If he only uses the PC for things like web browsing, checking email,
youtube, etc, then Linux is the way to go for sure. The added security is
a massive bonus, and the fact that you can set it up so he is NOT the root
user, is a big bonus because it makes it very very difficult to "break something".
XP SP3 will run just fine on a 20gb drive. The 512 ram however will absolutely
affect how fast it is running hence why I reccomend linux. For ease of use, I
would highly reccomend either Ubuntu, or openSuse. If he is really used to
Windows, I would recomend openSuse as it is very user friendly and is layed
out somewhat similar to windows (including start menu) and usually comes with
everything you need out of the box. The software manager and updates are all
done really easy through a GUI (command line can be used). Ubuntu does this as
well, so its really up to you. I installed opensuse for my grandparents (they never owned
a windows pc previously) and they love it. They also find that when they use a friend's
windows PC, they know that navigating to what they need is almost the same.

Sorry, I would have chosen your answer as best but I accidentally made a discussion instead of a question.