Wrong resolution in a old laptop

[sudodus]

You can try one of the community re-spins of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (promising support until April 2017).

Bento, Bodhi, LXLE

[Bucky Ball]

If the machine is only going to be used for simple presentations, I would personally do a minimal install, add the lightweight desktop environment of your choice (xfce4 or lxde or one of the others sudodus mentions) and the apps you need to do the presentation. With a lightweight DE that should fly.