i want to get myself a laptop but being a student i can't afford much. I've had my eye on a Dell L400 for two reasons: 1) Price range on ebay is within my reach and 2) it's REALLY small which is what i would prefer.

what i'd like to know is would the 700mhz cpu with 256mb ram(which i'd like to upgrade to 512) be enough to run slackware10/KDE3.2(visual settings set to half way on the kde wizard) at a decent speed?

i know that setup would run fine on a desktop, but i've heard laptops are slower than their desktop equivalent.

cheers
matt

I would say it would run it with no problems. Though KDE is a hog itself, have you ever thought of any alternatives like Fluxbox or any other lighter window manager. I had a 475Mhz laptop with 128megs of RAM which flew with Flux..