To Mixture and Saab Dastard, and to Seacue as well who kindly sent me a PM, thank you for your advice. My father-in-law is 89 years of age and has developed his own very special way of doing things on his old PC so that he doesn't have to learn new tricks. I think that Linux would be a non-starter, I'm afraid.
With the benefit of your advice a new machine looks best. If he has to get a local techy to add RAM (assuming that the machine will accept it) and then do all that is necessary to back up his very cherished files, family and squadron photos and correspondence, install W7 and all of the programs and drivers and then reinstate the files, I expect that the cost won't be far off the price of a new machine - provided the shop will migrate his files and reinstall his programs. Progress isn't all positive for everyone.....
Last edited by Cameronian; 5th Mar 2014 at 09:25.