Degru

Well, my desktop is running on integrated graphics. Intel GMA 3100, to be exact. Yeah. Can't even play UT2004 at good settings. My main computer is my laptop with Intel HD 4000. It'd be a massive upgrade to pretty much any computer I own, and would give me a kick-start for when I build a proper gaming rig.

This thing is cool as shit. Would definitely be a massive improvement over my current setup for movie watching, which is just my laptop.

1. ChromeOS 2. Elementary OS 3. Ubuntu 4. Windows 10 5. Windows 7

Yes. All of the tasks you listed are perfectly doable in Linux. Considering this is an XP machine, I'd go with a lighter distro. Try downloading Linux Mint MATE Edition and putting it on a USB drive. Boot from it and play around in it to see if everything your parents would use works, and install it if you want.

Go to the Setup option, and find an option to reset everything back to defaults.

Try Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Linux Mint is more similar to Windows, while the latest version of Ubuntu will have more updated software. There are lighter variants of both available (Xubuntu/Lubuntu/Ubuntu MATE, and Linux Mint MATE) if the computer can't quite handle the regular version.

Not Arch. Not for a basic user.

Nope.

Remove All deletes all programs, settings, and files, and leaves you with a fresh, activated install of Windows (no, it does not delete Windows itself). I'd suggest the "keep files" option, as this will only remove programs and settings, and leave your user account and files intact. Basically like having a fresh install, but all your files are already there. This option also doesn't fully delete programs and settings, just moves them into C:\Windows.old. So if you want to recover anything from there (like your browser profile, Steam/Origin folders, etc.) you can do that and then delete the rest with Disk Cleanup.

qbittorrent. Love the sequential download option. Lets you play videos as they're downloading.

If you're going to college, most have free Office. To check if you can get it, enter your school email address (.edu address) into this page: https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education You could pay for the Office 365 subscription as well. Of course, it's also pretty easy to pirate it, but I won't help you with that.

Unigine benchmarks for the GPU, and Intel Burn Test for the CPU is what I use. Can't really use both at once, however. Folding would be your best bet to stress both at the same time.

1. Run disk cleanup, make sure to select the option to clean up system files. 2. Disable hibernation if it is not already disabled. Open admin command prompt and type "powercfg /hibernate off". 3. Decrease the size of the pagefile, depending on how much RAM you have. The smallest you should go is about 1GB, while the default is however much RAM is in your computer. If you have sufficient RAM for the things you do, then just set it to 1GB. Here is a guide on how to do this. These instructions are for Windows 7. Only change here is to open "My Computer" in Explorer, right click on empty space, and click Properties. If you don't free up much space, then just let it go. All of my Windows installs have always taken up around 25-30GB of space with all the updates installed, no matter what version.

Yes, it will be retail. As for getting it, you can either get just an ISO download, or you can order a USB installer in addition to the download for no extra cost. I'd go for the latter option, since it gets you a cool Microsoft-branded USB stick.

Not a forum, but the Arch wiki is an extremely useful resource for any (systemd-based) Linux distro. Most of the stuff there applies to other distros as well, you just have to figure out the correct package names for anything that involves installing stuff.