I have been using ubuntu for 6 months. I have not realised any slowdown so far, it's actually as fast and responsive as the first day. Check the processes running in the background.
What's up with these "i am happy" threads? Some kind of group therapy? Besides that, i think there is a poll in this section about nehalem adoption rate. Either way, my name is George and i am happy with the setup in my sig:)!
First i want to see the platform overall. 3 cpus and one chipset doesn't tell me anything. I want to see many models from $200 to $500 and of course the AMD's response (if any).
C++ The Complete Reference fourth edition by Herbert Schildt. If you want to go deep. It also explains the differences between C and C++ which you may find it very useful.