Kernels are largely independent of Debian version. You should be able to snarf the kernel of your choosing from either the Debian package site of your choosing, or from kernel.org. I'm still leaning slightly to 2.2.x kernels, as the 2.4 has still not meaningfully stabilized. Unless you're interested in cutting-edge features, there's no compelling need for 2.4. Reiserfs support is avialable (via patches) for 2.2, which is the main argument I would consider.

It's possible to run Debian over a dialup. If needs be, run updates periodically on an overnight basis if you can't tie up a phone during the day, or snarf off of someone's high-speed link. For an intermittently connectec box, you can be a bit more lax with updates.

I'd still recommend going with an unstable, rather than stable, release. The difference is that you want to pin most of your packages so you're not doing low-level updates. Stick to security and bugfix stuff.

That Peter guy? He's full of shit half the time, and British the rest of it ;-)