My undergraduate training was as a graphic designer, and my significant other for many years was a graphic designer working in a company that published legal and technical books. We did a couple of books together for friends. I've read up more than a little on typography.
In general, serif typefaces are easier to read than sans serif typefaces. Beyond that, it's much more likely in a sans serif typeface that the upper case 'I' will look like a lower case 'L'. So ... if this is going to include paragraphs rather than just titles and captions -- go with a serif type face.
You have a good point about "standard" fonts and computers. A few years ago I designed an entire suite of letterheads, business cards, and other "stuff" for a friend and sent him the files. Several months later he sent me a screen shot of a letter he had written on the letterhead, and it was a jumbled-up train wreck of a disaster. Turns out he had "optimized" his computer by deleting almost ALL the fonts that ship with Microsoft Windows. And then he diidn't know how to reinstall them, so I had to walk him through that.
Bottom line -- go with Times New Roman. It isn't copyrighted, or Microsoft couldn't call it that. (Notice that Microsoft calls their sans serif typeface "Arial." It's identical to "Helvetica," but somebody has the rights to "Helvetica" so Microsoft can't use that name without paying a licensing fee. It's a curiosity about typefaces that you can pretty freely copy a typeface, but you can't srteal the name.
Times New Roman is ubiquitous. Just about any system anywhere will either recognize it and map it correctly, or recognize it and have a pre-mapped substitute for it that should map correctly. You won't win a prize for originality, but you'll avoid a LOT of headaches.
