Debian on Slow laptops. What setup is best?

[Benedek Frank <linux@celifornia.com>]

Hi

I am seeking info from other people who has slow laptops, or just know how to 
save memory and CPU usage on a Debian system.

I am an owner of a Sony Vaio PCG-C1VRX/K laptop, that has a Transmeta Crusoe 
600MHZ CPU, which is very slow in nowdays, but I refuse to change it as I 
love it. I have a Centrino DELL laptop, but I dont use that much, as I am 
just inlove with this thing, however I need it to be faster.

I have a 2.6.11 kernel. I saw a major slowdown from when I upgraded to 2.6 
kernel, from 2.4. Even disabling Discover, I now only have Hotplug, but boot 
time is still around 3 minutes. That is to console. From there, I booted KDM 
and KDE, and my full boot time was around 4 minutes and a little.

I looked into smaller window managers, but finally I am using now XFCE, which 
is ultra fast compare to KDE. I dont use KDM now anymore, I rather log in 
with console and do a "startx" from there.

However, still my boot time is unacceptable. Not even speaking when I try to 
open Kmail or Openoffice, and Firefox. They take a loooooooong time to boot 
up.

Anybody has any more suggestions, how to make a speedy but usable Debian 
laptop?

Thanks

Bence