Laptop Advice

[Night Wing]

@SpaceCoastPaul

You don't have to be tech savvy to use linux. I'm not tech savvy. Since linux Mint is free, you could download the Mint Xfce iso and burn it to a DVD disk. Just make sure if you download the Mint iso in the desktop environment you want, you choose the 32 or 64 bit iso to match your Vista's operating system's bit. The disk would be a "live" DVD where you can load the disk into your DVD drive, then bring up the boot menu (by tapping the F12 key on your Dell computer until the boot menu appears when you restart your computer) highlight the DVD drive and then boot the live Mint disk to your Desktop. Since the disk is "Live", you can play with linux Mint even though it is "not" installed on your Vista computer's hard drive. In other words, your Vista hard drive is safe.The live Mint will have Firefox as it's default browser. Just don't double click on the "Install Linux Mint" icon on the Desktop because that will format your hard drive in order to install Mint.

The live DVD is how I learned how to use Mint and then after liking Mint, I installed Mint on a second hard drive since I didn't want to partition one hard drive with two different operating system on that one drive. BTW, Mint has a graphical installer just like Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. You won't have to use the linux terminal like so many Windows people say you have to install linux Mint or for that matter, linux Ubuntu.

[SpaceCoastPaul]

Thanks guys, but we're almost to the point where my analog brain is overheating just like my HP did before it died.

The only hard work that my computer is doing, that I'm aware of, hell it may be hacking the NSA while I'm asleep, is editing my lame GoPro videos. Everything else, except for an occasional Powerpoint, spreadsheet or doc is done online. So shouldn't I just optimize for that?