Which will be most useful for the laptop's. Gnome or KDE ??

Kde is more customizable than gnome. KDE looks good, easy to use.

Kde is better in --looking display, menu's , file managers, preferences, and even exit options also

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6 in one, half a dozen in the other. each to his own. i personally prefer KDE, but Gnome works nice too. both are very resource heavy and will bog the system down. well can depending on the power of the CPU, GPU, and how much RAM you have as well as what Distro you are running.

perfect example of what distro is Fedora 11 v Open SuSe (latest vs). both run the same vs of Gnome, but Open SuSe runs at about 1/5th the speed of Fedora on the desktop. i can not say why other then for many years now SuSe (even before Novel got involved with them) has been a major resource pig when it comes to running a GUI, but they have some very powerful network tools that i have never seen on any other distros Gnome/KDE desktop, just wish it was not so damn slow.

There is no better/best, use whichever works for you.

Personally I have never liked Gnome and kde4 just down right sucks.

It depends on your laptop's resources and personal choices more than anything.

Try both and see which you like. My preference is gnome. My exposure to KDE is with Knoppix. I think it's ugly and distracting. Clearly there are people who prefer it, and to them it's gnome that's ugly and distracting. I would suppose that it's configurable enough to make it something I would like. The catch is that I don't really have any interest in learning how to configure it. So, like I said, try both and make your choice.

If you have the cd's to spare, why not burn multiple live cd's and try em till you find one that fits. My experience is that some distros are better with gnome while others are better with kde or xfce or whatever.

But if you just want a vote, then for my laptop it's gnome. But then again I run ubuntu on that and like I said above I think ubuntu is better with gnome. Even then I actually have kde apps installed like konqueror that I frequently use. My desktop is ALWAYS kde (4.3.1 right now and it's GREAT!)

Desktop environment choice depends on the fact whether u want :

a. lightening fast work

1. lxde 0.5.3
2. xfce 4.6.1

b. eye-candy

1. kde 4.3.2
2. gnome 2.28

That's a horribly myopic view of things...there is far more to it than that:
kde 4.3.2 is still less than adequate for many users: 4.3.4 less so, but whether you would be happy with that is a matter of taste (as is all of this thread).

"Lightning fast work" (or not) depends on where you are coming from; if you expect that the computer does a lot of the work for you, you'll probably find the Gnome and kde are faster than lxde and xfce. If you are at least a trainee guru, you'll probably have the opposite opinion and despise the hand-holding that the heavier GUIs give you. Matter of taste, as I say.

And what about enlightenment: at least for my money, the eye candy is tastier than Gnome and the lightness is at the very least close to xfce.

Or you could install one distro that supports multiple GUIs. The second part is completely true, though.

Also, if you have primarily experience of Windows, you might be looking for something that the user interacts with in a windows-ish way (probably kde) and if you are coming from a Mac, more of a mac-ish way (probably gnome).

I prefer Gnome for (And I don't care what other people say) the amount of customizability I can find in it.
KDE I like as well, but I find it harder to make it look the way I want, and the KDE menu I find clunky. I prefer Gnome's applications/places/system on a panel.

But if I really have to do something quick, it's Openbox, unless I can't get WICD, in which case it's Gnome, with the Openbox replacing metacity/compiz.

Much easier mounting and stuff with Gnome
aint no replacement for Gnome

I prefer Gnome personally, but it is all a matter of taste as well as which works best for a distro. I find Gnome to be easier to use and more customizable. KDE is more eye candy. Both have programs that are good, so I do use some KDE programs.

Keh deeh eee