My mom was just given a used computer, and I'm having trouble resetting it

[Xiahou]

Vista must have been horribly slow on that, even from a clean install and any newer version of windows won't be much better.

FWIW, I run Windows7 on some single core Celeron laptops and it's pretty smooth. The only part that stutters is full-screen video from youtube and whatnot. I would expect a dual core from the same generation to form a little better if anything. The biggest improvement was going from 1GB (which was still usable) to 3GB of RAM in my case.

I find Windows7 isn't very happy until it has at least 2GB of RAM....

But for Tuuvi, I'd give Mint a whirl. The only thing it will cost you is the price of a DVD-R, which isn't much in this day and age.