Well, I finally got round to getting (ordering, anyway) my new computer today. Getting it from the same local shop/firm where I got my present desktop and laptop. I haven't really studied the hardware side much, but it sounds pretty good to me. Here are some details:

* AMD Athlon 64 x2 5200+ DualCore Processor (3 years manufacturers warranty), can be up-graded, see below.
* System is built around the quality ASRock N61P-S motherboard (2 years manufacturers warranty)....

Yes, Debian's back on my laptop. But "lenny" this time. I've decided to have two contrasting stable distros: Slack 12.2 and "lenny", and I've got room for two more, which will be more cutting-edge, unstable, "Oh ****, what's happened now!?", types. I was thinking of, maybe, Arch and Fedora? Not sure yet.

I've suddenly lost interest in Debian. I'm not saying it's bad, far from it. Just got bored with it, that's all. It doesn't seem to give me the same incentive to learn and experiment that Slackware does. Learning how to write SlackBuild scripts and how to use src2pkg will give me a lot more satisfaction and sense of achievement than simply browsing and clicking through Synaptic, which is what I'd fallen into the habit of doing on Debian.

I've decided to keep XP Pro on my laptop. After all, it's never given me any trouble, it might come in useful, and I've loaded it up with Cygwin and other non-M$ stuff. I have no objections to the OS, only to the gang who make it.
I've gone back to using Slackware 12.2 after my little experiment with Slackware current. Chickened out, don't think I know enough yet to handle it.

Ever since I got this laptop (about 6 months ago), I've been dithering about what to do with the XP Pro that came pre-installed. Keep it, just for the sake of variety? Get rid of it, because I hardly spend any time on it? When I deleted XP Pro from my desktop I never missed it - not for even a nanosecond. That space it's taking up, 30 GB on a 160 GB HDD, should be put to better use. Something else I can't make up my mind about: whether to just scrub XP by installing another distro in that partition,...