I have recently acquired an oldish XP machine, which isn't up to upgrading to Win7. Of course I just might switch it over to Linux, and save on hassle.

That's exactly what I did.

My old XP machine was getting very slow so I tried every trick I could find to try and reduce the clutter etc. This included unchecking any unnecessary startup programs, removing old, unused programs, clearing out "temp" directories, regularly emptying the browser cache etc. etc. While this all had some effect, in the end startup was still slow. I had reduced the total boot time from 15 mins to 10 mins which was some improvement but not all that wonderful. One thing I did notice was that AVG always seemed to hog processor time when it was starting up and it usually then updated the AV definitions so I removed it and installed Panda AV. That did help somewhat as Panda stores the AV definitions online. Even so it still remained slow to start up and also every now and then the OS would take over the computer and chatter away for several minutes to no apparent effect and leave you unable to do anything useful.

In the meantime, I had bought an Acer Netbook that came preloaded with Linux. A somewhat restricted version but it did most things I wanted and I found out how to "unlock" it so I could install some extra programs. I was particularly impressed with the startup time - about 2-3 minutes so I looked around and downloaded the then current version of Ubuntu and tried it.

It was a revelation, rapid start up, good selection of software, stable OS that sits in the background and lets you get on with it. I didn't completely abandon Windows as there were some programs that I still used so I set up a dual boot system. I finally abandoned Windows when I bought my new computer and nothing would start up with the dual boot so I simply reformatted the hard drive and went 100% Linux. I still use a few Windows programs but they run fine using Wine. My current Ubuntu system starts up from "cold" in under a minute.

I definitely will not go back to Windows. I realised recently how sluggish it is when my printer packed up and I had to borrow my daughter's computer to print something in a hurry as we were just on our way out and needed the documents to take with us. She had hibernated it and it hung when I switched it on, so I had to reset and do a "cold" start. It took what seemed ages to load up and was then slow opening the documents I wanted to print.

So, changing over to Linux is well worth considering. There is a learning curve as things are done differently but there is plenty help available online. I use Ubuntu which is generally rated as fairly easy to set up if you are a newcomer. I certainly found it so and the Ubuntu forums are very good for information on most things. Linux Mint is another which has a good reputation as being easy to set up for newcomers.