My parent’s old pc is running really slow. So slow in fact that scrolling down in chrome leads to framing and so does watching videos in fullscreen mode. What I need it for is just videos, music, browsing and torrents. Will using a linux draw less resources for it and if yes, which distro is a good option for me?
The reason I prefer to try out a live cd is that there isn’t enough space to make new partitons and it is too much of a hassle if in I end up not getting something to work.
Slax 
One of the best Live CD, comes with KDE and have decent codecs to get the work done
Apart from it try AntiX Main Page - antiX
You didnt mention specs… depending on that you can try a more mainstream live distro like Ubuntu (or Xubuntu if you want lightweight) 9.04 instead of the more obscure distros and desktop UIs… actually maybe try LinuxMint as a so-called better version of Ubuntu.
edit: i recommend wiping clean the hard disk anyway, then reinstall your existing OS (windows?) to see if things clear up, if not, then you can try a live CD and if that works better then totally re-wipe the hard disk and put Linux exclusively on it
I tried Slax which worked great; the videos ran smoothly and the audio was working ok, so I guess there are no driver compatibility issues. The only downside is the long bootup time but that makes sense.
The PC is an Athlon 1ghz running XP. So, I guess that the problem has to do with the installation than the hardware. However, the pc is now set up in such a way that shifting to linux would be a total hassle, plus I need xp for the zune software. I guess I will try to get a decent installation of linux running on this pc the next time I am home.
^^Well the long boot up time is because of slow system and live cd. You can substantially reduce the boot time after installing it
There are no alternatives for Zune 
$#itty MS policies You can try wine to emulate and see if it works
hehe… yeah, if it weren’t for games and other exclusive content then ms would probably have a harder time retaining its users 
Unfortunately Wine doesn’t help with Zune software. It’s a pain in the butt. That’s why I shifted back to the iPod.