I need some advice, please. XP is being phased out, and I have a reliable laptop which I use when [View all]

traveling, which isn't as often as it used to be.

It is a Compaq Armada E500 with an Intel Celeron processor 597 MHz, 512MB of RAM, 139G of free space, 1.96 GB of available virtual memory.

It appears that Windows 7 won't run well on this older slower processor.

I have never worked with Linux or any of the other open source systems, but thought this might be the time.

Any advice? I'm a teacher with those typical uses - word processor, presentation, light database work.

I'd like something that runs well on this processor and requires ordinary skills to install, please.

Thanks in advance!