No idea about the music files, but it's certainly possible in Windows-land.... Well, I'm not a huge fan of Mint, since basically all it is is Ubuntu without caring about doing illegal things. And Ubuntu's smart enough these days about fetching codecs when you need them that it's really not necessary anymore, so just running Ubuntu would get you the same experience while still being supported by the Ubuntu community. 850MB should be enough to run anything he wants. It may not be super-fast, but it will work plenty well for any normal person. Certainly dual-booting would give him better performance, but wubi or virtualbox should be functional. I've never tried wubi, and I must say the concept sounds a bit sketchy, but from what I've heard anecdotally it seems reasonably solid these days. Perhaps start with wubi and if performance bothers him move to dual-boot. Note that if he's in the Twin Cities people will be having release celebrations the next two Saturdays where they could help him out - http://ubuntu-minnesota.org/regions/metro - Tony