[ILUG] light-weight dell laptop with ubuntu?

[keith]

im writting this on a dell lattitude L400 multi booting with microsoft 
windows 2000, suse 9.3, 10.3, xbuntu (hardy heron) and DCL (puppy 3.01)

windows is there for cad & games
9.3 is a legacy install i must clean out someday
10.3 is an attempt to strip OpenSuse to its leanest and still have a 
(usable) gui (blackbox at the mo)
xbuntu is the default, but hibernation is intermittent: sometimes it 
will sleep wonderfully when i close the lid, other times it refuses like 
a burro. the hibernate buttton (Fn Suspend) works flawlessly.
DCL puppy is cute.  but im not (yet) convinced by the jwm window manager.

i love this machine: its been on 3 continents, its tough, has an A4 
footprint, quick enough for most tasks, including some large autocad 
drawings, its light, less than 1kg: the ati chipset is not 3d 
accelerated so wont do google earth and skype is marginal at best.
batttery life is lousy at just over an hour, due to it now only charging 
to 35% of its new capacity: And i bought it from a guy in Leeds many 
years ago for about 120 euro
im torn between repalcing it someday with an eeePc or a dell xps1330