Is my upgraded Laptop any good for recording?

Hi There

I've had an Acer 7520 Laptop for some time which I use on the move mainly for the internet and general use. However, it was not a joy to use due to Vista and RAM limitations, hence the upgrade. On the plus side, it does have a 4-pin Firewire IEEE 1394 port and 4 USB 2.0 ports on it. The specs at point of purchase were:

AMD Athlon 64 x2 - TK-53 (1.7GHz - 2 x 256 Kb L2 Cache)
1GB of DDR2 RAM
Vista Home x32
80GB HDD
Screeds of unecessary Acer bloatware installed on it.

I've upgraded the RAM to 4GB DDR2, gotten rid of Vista x32 and installed XP Professional x32 and stuck a 500GB HDD in it - possibly thinking of adding another for audio (depending on people's views on my question). Therefore, the new specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 x2 - TK-53 (1.7GHz - 2 x 256 Kb L2 Cache)
4GB of DDR2 RAM
XP Professional x32
500GB HDD

Would this be dooable as a portable solution for modest projects using a USB Interface? Or is the processor not that great?

I've no idea whether or not the Firewire is TI. How would I go about finding out?


Kindest Regards

Stewart