w0rd. Just a year ago I built a machine for someone with 8-yr-old spare parts and it runs XFCE just fine. She's your average person, not a very articulate computer user, but she can email/internet browse/AIM just fine with it. I never got her iPod to work right with it, nor CD burning, and a ton of other things, but I'm sure you'll get them to work just fine. The XFCE interface was lightweight and fast, and the Xubuntu package is really something else.
Most of all though, have a ton of fun with it
