instal ubuntu 7.10

[Valiant (on laptop)]

Hi.
I can boot ubuntu 7.10 live from the cd on 3 different systems, all are laptops and all have realtech sound cards and all produce choppy speech and all are otherwise very different, one is an alienware area 51, another is a sony vaio and the last one is an acer aspire. The alienware has a 2.16ghz core2 duo 2gb ram, and the vaio has a core2duo 1.66ghz 2gb ram. The  acer has an AMD sempron 1.8ghz and 764mb ram. Anybody suspect the choppy speech won't be the case after I install? I do.
I want to install on the alienware. I hear you can shift existing partitions. So I don't have to screw up the alienware's xp installation for which I don't have a replacement. I got to buy an external drive for backups. So can I make xp's installation 50gb and leave the other 30gb for ubuntu 7.10 during the installation of ubuntu, then tell ubuntu to install on what it freed up by downsizing xp's partition? Oh and yes xp's partition is small enough to be limited to 50gb. Last question, how do you start the installation process accessibly from the live cd?


Yeah I could go check out the docs but if someone who has done it already can answer here it'll be easier.
I've never used linux before. I'm pretty familiar with windows in regard to general use.
Thanks
Cheers:
Aaron T. Spears
Aaron T. Spears (valiant) 
EMail: valiant at mailshack.com and others 
MSNMessenger: a1t2s3_89 at hotmail.com 
AIM: computeruser89 and skype: aarontech.valiant 
Beta Testing System Information: 
soney Vaio VGN250n . Intel core 2 duo 1.66ghz . 2,048 mb ddr2 SDRAM (667 mhz) . Intel graphics . Realtech audio 
Toshiba 160gb 5,400 rpm hdd (Microsoft Windows Vista business)
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