No, I haven't tried the ACPI switch yet. I'll see if I can do that when I return to it more intensively. I haven't depended on the power management stuff working in any of my Linux installs - I just leave the intensity turned down with the lid propped open, and stand it up on its leading edge, propped up out of the way... :-/

I suspect you're right on several counts, but the system is much better with the default Gnome install. I noticed in my brief poking around that Gnome has many of the fancy GUI enhancements turned off, while I think a lot of them were turned on with KDE 4.x. I don't know enough about either of them to do much tuning yet....

The wireless still seems a little flaky, taking several minutes to connect to my WAP, and DNSes seem to be lost for no apparent reason for a minute at a time, but it is working.

Thanks very much for your comments, especially on the Debian caveats. Given all of that, and since the T41 is mainly just for playing around during commercials while I watch TV, I'll look around a little but won't assume that simply a new Linux distro install will fix it. I'll probably just live with it until I have a more pressing need.

I'll report back if I find out anything more that might be useful to you or others.

Thanks again.

Cheers,
Scott.