My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 2400-S251 with Super Savage Video chip.
It does have pae built in. 30 gb hd and 512 mb ram.
Ubuntu above 12.04.3 has issues with the Savage video chip. Also it won't boot from USB drive.
This what worked.,
Download Hirens Boot CD
http://www.hirensbootcd.org
It has "plop boot loader" on the CD.
Burn isolated file to a CD.
Create a USB boot flash drive.
I used Universal USB Installer from www.pendrivelinux.org.
Shut pc down with CD in drive and plug in USB, turn computer on. Select plop, then USB and USB will automatically boot flash drive.
I used Crunchbang (Wheezy ) it's got openbox which makes it fast on old slow machines. It has vlc preinstalled. Plays avi, mp4 files out of the box.
I just installed Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 26. First thing I change is the wallpaper. It's got flash plugin preinstalled, I need this to listen to music using www.pandora.com. I also install lightdm , its easier to change desktop managers such as xfce.
I'm happy, hope this helps someone.