Lubuntu-10.04-Desktop-i386 has given new life to this old laptop. I had this laptop and another HP sitting on the top shelf of a closet for the last few years and just for the heck of it I thought I would try GNU/Linux on them. Their performance was extremely weak using any of the latest desktop distro's. But when I loaded PCLinuxOS LXDE-2010 it was amazing how well this old computer ran. I then downloaded Lubuntu, and all things considered, have been very pleased with its performance. (I did max out the RAM at 2GB). It's not lighting fast but fast enough that I'm using this laptop again, mainly for surfing and email (Chromium web browser). It took 42sec to download a 5min YouTube video, the video itself was a little choppy, and the audio was ok.

My laptop processor info is listed below:
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 662.525
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow up
bogomips : 1325.05
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 34 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid

I'm running a 2.0Ghz Athlon as a desktop. I presume there's some clever power saving stuff going on to reduce the clock speed, as 662 Mhz is low for a 1500 Athlon. Rock on - avoid kde and other bloatware. Had you a question or were you just chatting?

No questions, just putting some information out there for anyone who might find it useful.