Got sick of Windows a few months ago and pulled out a 6 year old laptop with a crashed hd and replaced it iuth a 240 gb SS hd and loaded Linux Mint. It is 5 years older than my Windows laptop and runs 4 times faster.
Yep, that is definitely the way to go!
Yeah, doing a memory stick Linux try on an old laptop, and then swapping in a SSD and doing a permanent install, is on my to-do list.