I've been updating my system at school, but at home we don't have high speed internet. If I download the current Sarge CD set, will it be close enought to stable? Or should I find a way to not update my computer until next year? Other thoughts?

It should be close enough to stable, there are still 40+ RC bugs open, but that won't hurt much. You can always get a 'real' stable version later.

Do I need all 14 CDs or however many there are? I've heard that I only need the first 2 or 3. I'll probably download all 14 any way. Thoughts?

You probably don't want all those CDs, hey. The first 3 are generally enough to satisfy anyone. To quote debian.org themselves about sarge stable,

"Debian releases when it is time"

Testing of course, is stable enough for anyone to use imho.
The beaut thing about debian mate, is you should only really need 1 CD to start with- I reccommend the sarge netinst iso. From there, you can just apt-get what you need to download. Only the first download or so will be massive- just turn the damn monitor off and leave her running overnight. Simple.

Hope this helps.
Dave.

If you don't have fast internet at home. Then amount of CDs you want to use depends on what do you want to use computer for.

If you don't have problems downloading CDs take at least 2 - Gnome+KDE+Office - very basic install. And if you want to have some development tools, some packages that are rare - then go for 4-5 CDs.
Then most of chances that you'll be saticfied with packages tools.

I'll probably download all 14 if I have time before school gets out. Sarge is set to release in a week, supposedly, http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel.../msg00020.html
I'll wait a week and see what happens, if it's not released, I'll download a testing set, then upate them using jigdo once school starts again, or when I can get high speed access