I wrote in my OP from my Win7 at a coffee shop I hadn't visited for a year due to Covid. They shut the doors but the proprietor let me hang out on my own running antivirus AVG and writing to you good people so I satisfied myself that the slow old thing still worked. Decided to leave it as is which is working and kind of funky with old screensavers and perfectly suitable for off line use as you recommend. I have other laptops to load with linux. Used Ubuntu in the past and loved it but I've got to relearn it by now.

Thanks for every one of your observations. I'll look into 'em.