I’m looking at http://linuxmint.com/
I made the bootable DVD and tried it, looks good running from the DVD.
Thinking I’ll install it to dual boot with XP to try it further. The manual is decent and it comes with an open source “Office Suite”.
I installed mint with cinnamon on my FIL’s old XP machine. It runs nice. I never did get it to work with the printer but he never prints any way.