I'm no techie however I am learning to "deMicrosoft" myself as much as possible. I already use Gmail, Modzilla and Open Office. Now I would like to TRY Mandriva that I saw on Ebay on my compaq Evo N600c. Would that work?

Not a good idea to buy Linux on ebay

Download the distribution you want (burn to CD as .iso image)http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/community/

or look them over at http://www.distrowatch.com

or purchase your CD from your distribution site or distrowatch

There are many live cds that enable you to try them out without installing to your hard drive

or you can take the live CD to a computer store and try it on different laptops

Mike