Just one more question, the answer to which may be useful to many here....Right now I'm using Windows ME, but I have a reliable recovery CD for Win ME, which I can use anytime, and in fact, I do a complete reinstall every now and then.

Now, once the Linux CD's have been made, would it be easier just to have one system on the hard drive at a time? In other words, when one wants to switch, back up any data, wipe the whole drive clean, and switch back and forth between Windows and Linux that way. Would this be easier than partitioning? Would it be easier on the computer? Less problems? Obviously it would be slower, but one can do reinstalls while doing other things away from the computer....?

I haven't the foggiest about Linux, comments welcome.

No.
If there's one thing that I've found about Linux, it's that it's a time consuming process to configure everything to your liking. Partitioning the drive is easy, and a dual boot system is the best way forward. Unless you hardly ever want to use one of your operating systems, I wouldn't recommend this at all, and even then I wouldn't.
If you have any problems with dual-boot/partitoning, people here are generally eager to help.

Just create a few partitions:

hda1 - your windows Me partition
hda2 - your linux paritition

[then in the extended partition:]
hda5 - linux swap space (128 mb :-/)
hda6 - some 'exchange' parition for windows/linux
hda7 - more linux data??

Linux has a boot loader (lilo or grub) that allows you to choose between Linux or Windows at boot time from a menu.

Note that some recovery disks stop working if you alter the partitions.

If you have a stock computer where WindowsME was pre-installed, and you want to recover the WindowsME portion using the recover disk, I think you may want to delete the windows partition before using the restore disk. The restore disk program may be smart enough to install WindowsME in the unformated hole. If not, you might want to consider purchasing a second hard drive for linux.
In any event, make sure you have a working boot disk so you can boot back into linux. A windows install will replace the MBR. If the partitions hadn't changed, running the lilo command as root will re-install your linux loader (lilo).

Dude, doing a complete OS reinstall every time you want to switch between Win and Linux would be a huge waste of time. Partitioning is a one-time cost, and I'd echo yapp's suggestion of just setting things up to do a dual boot. There are numerous other posts here on the LQ forums related to that specific topic. Make use of the Search function and you'll be able to find out everything you need to know.

Welcome to the world of Linux and LQ -- J.W.