I inherited a Laptop PC over two years ago and wondered if it's worth keeping for some "minor" gaming.  It's a Sony VAIO EL2 VPCEL22FX/B 15.5" Laptop.  It's around 5 years old, and it was hardly used for the past two years.  I know it's not going to effectively run most newer games of those past two years, but I'm hoping it's good for something.  And I know it depends on what I want to use it for which I haven't figured that out yet.  But here's an Amazon link with its specs:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005NIR7K0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'm pretty much PC spec illiterate since I haven't kept up with the PC scene for some time now.  So should I trash the PC or could it be salvaged and how?

You can play flash games pretty well. Depending on the games you want to play, I would get a new PC/laptop.

The laptop will be good for any AAA game that is at least 9 years old.

But it will be able to play a very large amount of Independant games that don't rely heavily on graphics, for which there are buckets of in the PC world.

seems to be an AMD E-450 in there, which means it was already low-end when it released and gaming (apart from very old stuff/browser games/emulators) is pretty much out of the question - could still be used for browsing and 720p videos I suppose

Thats a old AMD apu usually 15watts or so.

Its too weak for any gameing. That laptop is for browseing/media, and useing word ect and thats about it.

*really old games, or like snes/ps1 emulator type games, facebook ones ect, should run okayish.

You can use it anywhere in your house.

Something like this would have no issues running older games like World of Warcraft at medium settings without a doubt, the best thing to do with a machine like this if you're unsure is basically stick steam on it, download a few of the free games like Flight Simulator and Team Fortress 2, or else buy a humble bundle for $1 and see how the stuff runs on it. you can basically do a lot of game testing on the PC without spending any real amounts of money.

Heck you could even put Battle.net on it and install the free versions of World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 or any of the other Blizzard games which are free (heroes of the Storm/Hearthstone)

It will likely struggle with allot of flash-based games. Especially if there are allot of entities on-screen.

So to the Op... This PC was never good, even on release, it's a Netbook, but with a bigger screen and a little more Ram, you might be able to get away with Minecraft if you tweak the game heavily and old PC games. (Look towards Gog.com)

Thanks for all the info thus far. Yes, this laptop originally belonged to my mom-in-law, and she never really needed anything too powerful to begin with. My intent was to install the newest version of Windows and an anti-virus software, and then I was going to run Steam on it for lesser demanding spec games.  Maybe it's not worth the resources and time to do so.

I woud not suggest installing Win 10 or updating the OS on that machine. Just start out by cleaning it out to the point that your "Programs and Features" only contains driver software specific to the laptop. Then run PC Decrapifier and RevoUninstaller to to finish cleaning it up.

Win10 has too much crap built in and will flood your PC with "Metro" apps that will be too much of a resource hog for that old machine.