Ubuntu.

As I have said before, I am not a Mac person.  I prefer the unpretentious easy usability of my PC.  I do not judge you for using a Mac, unless, of course, you start preaching at me from the Church of Steve Jobs.  I love my PC - my beautiful, sexy, amazing Dell.  She's hard not to love. --->

Before fate and AAFES Online brought us together, I spent the previous five years using Anna, my hard charging Toshiba laptop.  After two years of college and three years of being my family's home computer (including six months of TBS!), Anna was tired.  Really, really tired.  She was no longer quick with anything.  Even with an external hard drive to store all our TV shows and music, Anna was lagging.

So when Matt returned, and I had hooked up our wireless internet, Anna got shelved in favor of Matt's desert laptop (another Toshiba, of course).  No big deal, right?

Then, as Military members are wont to do, Matt had to leave the island for a while, taking his laptop with him.  And I realized I am not a one computer kind of girl.  I have my desktop upstairs, but what about when I am watching TV and I want to get a little more info on something?  I could not be expected to go all the way upstairs just to check it out.  What was I to DO??

Then, I remembered reading this article, about how to revive an old laptop with Ubuntu.  It's a completely free Linux based (don't ask me what that means) operating system.  All I had to do was burn it onto a CD (I used my desktop for this) and pop the CD in my laptop to try it out.  Ubuntu allows you to try the OS before fully loading it onto your computer.  It was in the trial mode that I found the new gaming love of my life - gbrainy.

Now, I haven't used my Ubuntu machine for much more than some web surfing and a little gbrainy playing, but I am really happy with it.   So basically, what I am saying is give it a try and if you're looking to speed up an old computer, it's worth a shot.