All it took was purchasing 2x1GB RAM sticks with Dell D610 RAM specs for about $20, plus $8 for genuine 90 W Dell power adapter with broken cord that I repaired using some Gorilla sricky tape. New genuine Dell 90 W power adapter would cost me around $35 which is certainly overkill for a $3 worth of a computer.
Before I can get HDD connector blade that converts an ordinary IDE HDD into what Dell accepts, I tried several "Live-CD" Linux distros booting from USB flash sticks.
My first choice was that recent lightweight Crunchbang thing, it worked fine, if being very spartan. I tried latest Debian, Linux Mint LXDE, Ubuntu 13.04, PC Linux OS, but ended up with Ubuntu Studio "Sausy Salamander" (13.10).
It appears that it took Intel about 10 years to release more or less adequate 915 GMA driver for Linux. Then, its "hardware acceleration" started to work out-of-the-box on 13.10 Ubuntu distros. This also means that this quite heavy Saucy Salamander beats many "lightweight" distros, at least when running off the USB stick. Just use Xfce for such an ancient hardware as this Dell Latitude D610.
The first XBMC package with a support of hardware acceleration in its player, Gotham 13.0 Alpha 7, works like a charm and plays 720p videos buttery smooth. 1080p content stutters though. I also upgraded XBMC in my Samsung Galaxy Epic 4G Touch (SPH-D710; kind of SGSII in other lands) to the corresponding Android Gotham 13.0 Alpha, works fine -- if only with some quirks.
So, once HDD will be installed and Saucy Salamander transferred to it, the laptop will be a nice computer worth of $150...$180. Or $200 worth of trade value for your Thinkpad T61p or T400.
All in all, as my lady used to say, I did good, so I think I deserve my regular big mug of Ceylon tea with this sandwich:
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