Well the CPxH arrived today. Looks lovely. Small problem, the CDRom does not work properly. I was advised to clean it, which I did, but it sounds as bad as it did before. Bizarrely, it would only read one disk - DSL, which is a "live-CD". Odd that it will boot that one (abeit with a little encouragement), yet it could not cope with any Linux install disk or any other "live-CD" that I had available.
I also mistakenly believed the laptop came with a modem port, as it was advertised as being supplied with a modem cable. Neither the port not the cable materialised. Just as well I never threw out my old PCMCIA modem then.
You have to appreciate the irony. I can't stick in the modem because the O/S needs to mount it, so I can't even download, say SuSE straight from the internet!

Update: What else could go wrong?
You've guessed it, that's right, my PCMCIA modem does not fit!