Hi - I have a Dell Inspiron 600M laptop. Specs:

p4M 1.6ghz
1024 MB ram (2x512)
40gb 5400 rpm hd
64mb ati video card - I forget exact model
cd-rw/dvd
Dell Truemobile 1400 minipci wifi card

So I was thinking that I would just put 10GBs of empty space in front of a 30GB windows partition. So then what would I do during installation of Mandrake to get it to dual boot properly? I don't have a floppy drive, btw. Thanks!

Mandrake will automatically configure the boot utility (LILO by default) for you, enabling you to dual boot. It's no big deal, trust me

I forgot to mention one thing: right now I only have 256mb (128x2) ram - with two 512mb sticks in the mail. So I was planning on using mandrake to auto allocate space for every partition - but won't it make the swap space only 256mb? Should I just change the swap partition to 1024 mb? which would I shrink then? Thanks!

Well... I don't think I ever allowed an auto partitioning (on any OS actually) but I imagine Mandrake would set it up as 1.5x the amount of physical RAM you have since that is the standard optimized amount. 384mb's should be more than enough regardless of what you have going on. I have 512mb's of physical and never touch the swap. Swap is just like Virtual Memory in Windows. It is just there to back you up in case you ever use all of your real RAM. Once you install that 1024mb's, you'll likely NEVER need that swap so leaving it at 384mb should be just fine.

So would there be a better way for me to partition it than using the mandrake auto partition function?

the auto function is ok, but it;s just as easy to plan what you you want/need and do it yourself. Personally, I like to keep things simple. Im using 7gb's for linux right now. I set it up like : / (/ is the root partition) / = 6.5gb's , swap = 512mb's. Easy enough.

When I get more into server apps, or just get my bigger hard drive I will probably include a few more. At least a seperate /home partition, but for now this works just fine.