torrents and so on, your thoughts?

Thanks for all the replies, reading more about all this. Decision is to stay as is for now with reasonable care as I do regular security checks and use linux for most part which is safer.

This is a ten year old laptop but works fine with latest Ubuntu 11.04 and OK with XP sp3 as well. No money for another machine yet as just got a car but looking at tablets and smartphones so when I get one of them this can be the home base used just for such things as torrents. If I use more of them, I will get anonymous and VPN and all that stuff.

Always impressed how much knowledge we have collectively, and how much good will too, thanks.

(Deleted DP which came after fixing typos.)

I have myself about 8 years old laptop, and it is just great. I use it as emergency computer and photographs backup server. Trisquel GNU/Linux is the OS. I got it for free and I could not imagine wasting my money on a newer one. I have a decent desktop as my main computer, though. It is dual boot machine. Windows 7 Enterprise (benefits of being a sysadmin) for flight sims and Trisquel for everything else.

Windows 7 is not very bad OS. However I only use it if I must. GNU/Linux systems just are so much better. Have used GNU/Linux 11 years, at times exclusively.