I'm going to install arch today when i get home which is in about 3 hrs, is there anything i should no? I have a laptop with an intel chipset i810 etc and its a 3.06ghz (Toshiba A30 - 714).

am i better off compilling a kernel of my own? i'll prolly need things like acpi or apm, we'll see which one works better. I also have a usb mouse. For sound will i have to run alsaconf like slackware?

any poinbters would be much appreciated, im not a newbie but any pointers would be much ap0preciated, oh and i have printed out the docs from archlinux.org. im doing an ftp install.

well it all went hopelessly wrong, i did the ftp install. one thing i never did was mount the cd because when i booted the install it mounted the cd to /.tmp/blah blah blah. the install i thought went well till i booted and my laptop said it had no operating system, i did install the bootloader so i have no clue what went wrong

try to redo the installation via CD.

If you like net installs just select de BASE and the NET package.
Reboot setup your network and then install things.

Pheraphs you alredy know but with your graphic card you need to modprobe the i810 module.
And use the precompiled kernel.Later when you have your system up and running you can compile one by yourself.