OK-first thanks to all who have answered my newbie questions!
I mentioned earlier that I had both a HP Pavillion Desktop a810n AMD Athlon64 3300+ w/1GB HD, SIS Integrated (760) graphics, full USB support, DVD R/W, etc.
I also have a Toshiba 7000CT Portege w/ 1 USB drive + IR USB(I think it's USB cause it says USB drive is sdb1--is IR sda1?), no CD-ROM, 1 floppy and broadband PCMCIA card, 160MB RAM, 4GB HD, Neomagic graphics.
I somehow installed Crunchbang 8.04 via USB (installed Crunchbang to USB with Fusbi/Unetbootin). However, during install the memory meter showed "110MB of RAM of 154MB available and 80Mb Swap of 235 available"!
After install, using the default openbox wm it runs at about 45MB RAM sitting idle, with 0-35KB swap and 7% CPU.
With XFE the RAM is 80 of 154, swap at 22MB of 235 and CPU at 17%.
Also-Crunchbang is taking up 1.51GB of my puny 3.74Gb HD.
So-question 1-How can I lighten the load on my RAM and HD in Crunchbang?
Is there anyway to break it down to under 1GB?Also-is Icewm lighter than openbox??

Question 2-I am using this laptop only for writing, light web surfing and storage of my writings-so should I just netinstall ubuntu 8.04 via CLI install and build from there?
PS--I have tried to install DSL(and alot of other distros) to this laptop without success-it cannot boot from USB without a boot floppy and when DSL starts up it either can't find the USB to load img, hangs at some point loading or has severe problems loading X and always is 640x800-Unacceptable as window buttons cant be accessed!
Crunchbang runs at 800x600 default-can I get it to 1024x768??
Thanks!

You might try using PLoP to boot a USB image of plain Debian. I would do a standard system install (i.e. don't select anything when it asks you for Tasks (Desktop, Print Server, etc) or since it's a laptop, just select "Laptop" (which probably gives you PCMCIA support. Then aptitude install xorg xdm icewm and build whatever you want on top of that. If you don't want a graphical boot, you can leave xdm off and just type startx after you login.

The last time I installed a base install like that, it used like 35MB RAM and 400MB hard disk space... Here's a page from the debian install guide about system requirements. Looks like a standard install + the laptop task will be about 400MB (after you do an aptitude autoclean after your first full boot). Don't select "Desktop" because you'll get Gnome, which will bring your machine to a halt...