The right setup for my computer
 

I am wanting to breath new life into this Dell Dimension 3000 with 500MB of RAM. My wife was using it for a while with Windows XP Pro but it was kinda slow for her.

I installed Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Xubuntu and UbuntuStudio on this machine because I am not quite sure what variant would be best given the configuration of my machine, as well as tips for faster boot up time and other tips to make this machine as fast and lean as possible.

When I boot up, I toggle between the above variants of Ubuntu to try them out. The internal HD is 80GB in size.

ahm i dislike the ?buntu os'es they are a real pain in the A
you should go try some other distros

Which ones would you suggest are easier to use than Ubuntu and that newbiews would feel comfortable using?

500 MB or is it 512 MB RAM
That is about the minimum amount of RAM to let a distro with a GUI to run smoothly.
I do not know is it still possible to upgrade you're amount of RAM and what the cost are.
It might be possible to use LXDE or XFCE with UBUNTU .
Both are smaller GUIS than KDE so it runs faster.
You can also try to determine with system service are started up and do you need them all .
A other possibility is to use a smaller version of linux like DSL , Puppy

yes damn small linux runs real good

OK. Thanks. I will look into it.