I basically have no clue as to what I a doing here.
I have tried to partition my HD and it didn't even work. These tutorials are like chinese to my brain and I would rather not waste anymore CDs trying to accomplish this.

My problem is basically this:

I own an Avaratec C3500 tablet pc and it has no floppy drive. I would like to learn to use linux because I have been involved with this flakey windows stuff for far too long. I would like to advance my capabilities in PC usage.

I have downloaded two isos but don't know how to create the boot CD's to the right settings

Also I am using Window XP and would like to partition my HD to use both windows and Slackerware 10.2 until I fully understand Slackerware. In this I will delete xp when the time is right. Plus not too many music programs are supported by linux.

I would love to be run through how to complete this if anyone is willing to help me out.

Please could someone rescue my brain from stress?

I'll give you my

1) Scandisk and Defrag windows XP. You want to see the second half of the drive empty of anything. There might be some "unmoveable files" (green color coded on my lappy). Now what you have to do to get rid of those is to disable your pagefile and your hibernation file. Here's a link to do that... After you've disabled those, you'll have to do another defrag. Don't re-enable pagefile or hibernation until after you've shrunk your windows partition. Make a note of how much of the drive is full (ideally you want the second half empty, but if not you just need to be sure not to shrink the drive beyond where files are placed).

1b) Backup anything important in case you hose it all up.

2) Download the GParted Live CD. It will be an ISO image. To burn it properly, you have to "Burn from Image". On Roxio Easy CD Creator 6 this is File --> Record from Disc Image.

3) Pop GParted into the CD drive and reboot. You might have to enter the BIOS (usually with Del key or F2 key) and enable booting first from CD drive. Shrink your windows partition in half (or to the desired size). Make a 5-10GB FAT32 partition right after the windows partition if you want to share files between linux and windows. Be sure to apply changes.

4) Reboot into Windows. Make sure it still works. Re-enable your pagefile and hibernate (if you use hibernation, otherwise, leave it alone as it just eats up disk space).

5) Download your distro. It will be an ISO image again. Be sure to "Burn from Image" or it won't boot correctly.

6) Put the CD in your drive and reboot. Follow the setup. Be sure to choose "Partition from Free Space" which should leave your windows partition alone. Generally I create /boot, /swap, and /, but you can do just swap and one big / partition and it'll be fine. Install the bootloader (grub or lilo) to the MBR. It should autodetect Windows, but if not, you can fix it later.

7) Finish the setup. Reboot into windows to make sure everything still works. Reboot from there into Linux and make sure everything works. Enjoy learning and tweaking your install.

A few caveats:
- I don't know much about tablet PC's or how new your machine is. Some distros will install easier than others on newer machines. It all depends on what has been compiled into the kernel. If you have trouble, pick a different distro (preferably newer). Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) is one of the most recently released. Haven't really used it myself...

- Be sure to backup anything important and be ready to reinstall windows if you have to. No matter how careful you are, something can always go wrong (like a power outage right during the install). YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!!

- After partitioning and before the linux install, you probably want to google for a review of the distro you picked. They usually walk you through the initial installation. OSNEWS is a good place that usually has screenshots of how the installation goes.

Good luck, Mr. Phelps. This message will self destruct...

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain such things to me. I will give it a try and let you know what the whole deal is. Again, thank you so much.