If anybody has issues with your printers wireless connection constantly dropping. Try setting a static IP address for the printers wifi connection. I've fixed 3 wireless printers by doing this. My wife's work bought her a new wireless laser printer 2 years ago. Thing would lose its ip address every time it went into sleep mode, and it would only reacquire an IP address about half the time. Changed it to a static IP address, and now it always just works.
I suffered for years before finding out about SLS causing canker sore outbreaks. Switched to an SLS free toothpaste, and haven't had a canker sore in years. Little advice for people still suffering from them though, rinsing your mouth out with peroxide, instantly stops the pain. Also no burning sensation like you get with a fresh cut. It also seems to shorten their duration too. Just be careful not to swallow any.
Your thinking of charcoal, which are chunks of wood converted into almost pure carbon by heating them above their combustion temperature in a low oxygen environment. He was talking about coal that was mined out of the ground. Plants from an ancient swamps that didn't decompose, but were converted into almost pure carbon from millions of years of heat and pressure from being buried.
Man, do yourself a favor and get an SSD. You can get a 512 GB for as cheap as $30 and a 1 TB for as cheap as $60 on Amazon. The speed difference is night and day. That's probably the single best upgrade you can do to an old machine.
After installation, run driver manager. It will install any proprietary drivers, and firmware. You will need to provide the laptop an internet connection through an ethernet cable when you run it though.
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/drivers.html