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Installed the alternate Ubuntu. The laptop now runs much slower than Windows XP. So much for Linux being faster than Windows..
Well, it is pretty well known (to Linux users) that the Gnome desktop environment is pretty hefty. "Linux" is just the OS, NOT the windowing environment. For older machines you should load Xubuntu which uses a less resource intensive windowing manager called XFCE.
XP has speed advantage due to the accelerated video drivers; a lightweight manager such as XFCE, Enlightenment or openbox on an older machine will definitely outperform XP since it consumes less resources.