Wanted a few good men, er, Linux guys?

[karina.popkova at verizon.net]

Hello

I have a Thinkpad T 41, for school, that has 
Win XP Pro installed on it. 
I need the functionality of Office on it, 
but I want to transition to Linux. 

Thus I want to install a linux distro 
with dual boot capability.
Someone was telling me some scary stories about 
Fedora Core (vers - ?) hosing the harddrive and
losing the MBR (etc., etc., etc.).

I told this guy that with FC v.4 out 
in "test 3" release,
any install problems are surely fixed by now (???)

Should I look for a copy of RH 9. instead?

Has anyone set up a Thinkpad or other
Laptop recently, with a relatively new
version of Fedora Core (v. 3  or 4) ???

PCs for Eveyone wants 2 hours x $99 +
$50 for dual boot. Can't afford $250
for such an adventure...

Comments?

thanks 

karina