as usual the problem is not the CPU. When the machine was new it was plenty fast enough for the task, namely being small and light enough to take as luggage/accessory when touring by microlight aircraft. It was enough of a computer to do the Met, Notams, GAR and email duty plus download photo's from a digital camera. It had (still has) good battery life. It was never intended to break records for computational grunt. The problem is the endless stream of upgrades pushed out by the software community which cripples every computer bit by bit.
I'm not ready to bin the whole lot yet. I just want to be able to use it for the purposes it was bought for. I have fitted the maximum RAM and changed the disk drive since the machine was new.
So, would Linux Mint be another step in the right direction?