Installed to HD on a Thinkpad T42P, nice but slow

Hey K-Rangers!

Name's Jason. Anyway... I have my desktop computer as dual-booting Windows XP and Debian - with each OS on its own hard drive. Recently I decided to dual-boot my laptop but with a partition, and it worked for the most part, but Debian couldn't operate my wireless card. So when I decided to wipe out Debian I managed to hose everything and end up with that dreaded "missing operating system" message at startup. )=

( At this point in time my Windows XP activation code is no longer valid. )

Eventually I decided to do a hard drive install of Knoppix because it's the only distro that is able to use my wireless card and I didn't want a USB dongle hanging out of my computer at all times. Now I'm pleased (and grateful) that I have a working laptop that can access the internet, but it just seems a lot slower than what a not so old Thinkpad should be. With Windows everything moved a lot faster.

Any advice?

Anyway, I am new to Linux but willing to learn because I think Microsoft has enough of my money.

Thanks in advance and nice to meet you!

PS Big ups to Hiren's Boot CD for making the recovery possible.