Anything later than XP isn't likely to run particularly well on a E1505. You might "get away" with it for your tasks as long as you have the system maxed out with 2GB of RAM, but you would need to purchase a license and it doesn't seem like it would work automatically- you'd need to tinker with several drivers.
XP only "went dark" in that the OS no longer receives security updates from Microsoft. So if it doesn't start or has a black screen that isn't related to any support changes. I have a few systems running XP and they are both fully capable of web browsing and using applications.
