Thanks to All, I was lacking the confidence to take the plunge, so I copied all files and photos to hard drive of XP pro Cad station via 32GB stick - plenty of space. Was then less worried about loosing stuff and OS.
Plenty of distros for sale in US and at Linux Store then realised how stupid I am as I had a couple of issues of Linux format magazines with one having a DVD with four different distros, two 32 and two 64bit. Hay presto, dropped it in the tray and up came welcome to GRUB followed by a list and then even more options. I chose Trisquel 32 bit and in about a minute there it was running just fine from the disc. Did not like the others as they were pretty empty and seemed a little flaky. A friend and good neighbour downloaded a 64bit version of Trisquel onto a stick and managed to get the old girl to boot from this.
So here I am communicating with you using Trisquel 64bit and Epiphany from this old laptop with T5800 chip – Windows Vista Home Premium gone forever. Tried their version of Ffox with Addblock Plus and NoScript – it did not work well – very slow and would not run web mail or this page.
Now I am free to try your suggestions out too. Thanks Guys! 