The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops

Pity you didn't try Mandriva.  I recently rescued a dying, old Acer laptop (256Kb RAM, 30Gb
HDD) that was grinding to a halt under XP Pro.

Installed Mandriva 2008.1.  Installation was a dream.  The lappy works even with compiz.
Couldn't believe it.  USB wireless detected automatically.  Network printer set up with not the
slightest problem.

I haven't done the sort of testing you did, though.

Peredur