Taking the plundge into linux.. help!

Compiz Fusion is nice to look at but it'll drain your battery a little faster, of course. On Intel onboard graphics you may have trouble playing videos with Compiz Fusion running. I probably wouldn't bother with it on that laptop.

You'll see your AC/battery icon after you start it up. Do the usual stuff with the mouse to get lots of interesting options.

See the links in my sig for much more info you may find useful.

try sabayon linux its already got virtualbox and compiz-fusion set up on it and its one of the best x64 distro's around

for the battery meter you can use (available for any distro you choose):
a) conky - small app which can print any info you want onto the desktop
b) power applet - there's a power applet for gnome's, kde's and xfce's panels
c) screenlets - widget application, similar to yahoo widgets. you have many battery meters to choose from

to increase battery life you can try using powertop, it automatically optimizes system to use less power (sort of automatic)

i say try Linux Mint. it has got Compiz installed already so that is not an issue... the download link is in my sig.

otherwise, with pretty much any Linux distribution you can use a note program like Tomboy(?) for notes, Openoffice for actual documents, assignments, etc, and there shopuld be a battery meter in the system somewhere... can't remember where as i do not use a lappy

i strongly suggest you look at a 'getting started with ubuntu' type book to familiarise yourself, or if you want to try Linux Mint, look here for a guide on the basics.

come to think of that i should probably read that guide - the one i read is older, lol.