I just last night loaded knoppix v3.6 to my 8500. Booting from CD works like a charm with no real problems (at least none that I've found, but it was just last night and I'm only getting back to it now).

The laptop is almost or is a year old, but it does have 512mb ram and a 40GB drive. It is a 2MHz P4. The one thing that does not really look good is the screen (on the laptop it's 15" wide) and the text and resolution aren't that great. Wireless card works great (that's how I'm getting here - via cable modem to a wireless adapter). USB works great, in fact, the CD was able to detect everything with no problems (I did boot as "no scsi" cuz I don't have any, so why look).

In that I'm new to these formus, I need to do some looking around, but my friends' Compaq (laptop) which is a couple of years old (1.2 Mhz P3, 512mb ram, 40GB drive, CDROM and DVD (separate devices)) did not boot from the CD (same one my Dell does boot from). It started but would hang very soon after that.

roofer

edit: I've loaded v3.7 today (Live CD). It too, works like a charm...