As can be seen in the picture above, I chose Linux Mint 16 to go with. We did have some changes. My brother gave me a much newer laptop, a Dell Inspiron of his that the hard drive died on. I was able to salvage his data and I put a new, larger drive in it. It was originally a Windows 7 machine, but I just installed Mint 16 from the beginning, everything went great. I am using a program called Wine to run some of my Windows programs, as well as what is called a Virtual Machine which lets you install XP or another OS "inside" the Linux, so that the programs think they are running in a Windows XP machine. I'm trying out a couple of different things there with good success. There are a few wrinkles, but I'm working them out.
My step-son's computer totally died before I could update it, so I passed along my Vista laptop to my partner, and put Linux on her previous laptop for him to use. A small learning curve, but he's doing okay with it I think.
I went with a slightly less technically demanding version of Mint, version 9, for my oldest Dell laptop, the Latitude 600. Still having issues getting the wireless adapter to work, but making strides on that. That will soon be my shop computer. My desktop also got a Linux 9, LXDE version, dual boot. It is still booting in XP or I can choose Linux. The newer laptop, though, is doing everything I need right now, so I haven't really put much further effort into the desktop. I will make it work, though, even if I'm not using it!
Onward!
