there's a cool quiz-like distribution chooser that tells you which distro to use depending on your pc knowledge.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/i chose vector linux in the first place to revive my old p3-500, now i run it on my fresh centrino laptop as well. it's said to be the fastest linux distro after gentoo and i have to confirm that.
vector is based on slackware, so benefits from its advantages like speed, stability, adjustability to your needs, without being difficult to configure like the original slackware (which isn't, but com pared to ubuntu), in fact, it was the only distro that recognised my ancient gpu correctly. however, do not be afraid of the command line and config files, i'd always recommend to set your preferences in the rc files rather than the gui managers...
for me, vector is the way to go. however, it has a really simple package management that does not natively support dependency tracking, but vector's gslapt does, so if you know synaptic/apt from debian/ubuntu, you might feel right at home.