i try other distros but i always wind up back w/Xubuntu. so hard to beat. recent 13.10 upgrade on an old Inspiron 8600 is clearly faster than 11.04 it was previously running. what a concept ... OS version upgrades w/smaller resource footprint. Mint/Xfce sounds promising, i'll give it a shot this weekend on similar old hardware. will also try CrunchBang's "older hardware" version. but Xubuntu is the rock.