I would also suggest Ubuntu. The newer versions seem to be fairly polished, easy to use and install.
I have recently installed a copy on the the laptop for the wife's IBM Thinkhpad R40. Great for surfing the web, I also bought a little cheap USB joypad so that she could play some old NES games under emulation.
The wife seems happy, so that makes me happy.
I have also tried a new version of Mint OS on my HP510 laptop, I liked it even more.
I think most Linux distros have come a long way and should serve most peoples needs.
Go ahead and play with a few, several seem to have live disks to test, so no installation is required to test them.
