That's why I recommend Mepis, because of its stability and the wide number of differing machines it works well on. It's based upon Debian Stable so therefore not as twitchy as some other versions that are based upon the newest (unstable/testing) versions. I actually wanted to go with Debian, but its install program was such a chore that I went with Mepis instead.
It also comes with a couple of rescue features on the install disk if you experience a problem. Hard drive crash, network malfunction, boot menu fail, all solvable. You can even use it to rescue files from a crashed PC and save them to an external drive.
You might get to like it too if you use the Gnome desktop instead of the default KDE one. I found that makes a lot of difference to people according to the type of machine they are most comfortable with.
I wanted to go with PCLinux originally, but they turned out to be RedHat-based and I wanted to stay within the Debian system. The Slax and Arch Linux platforms were out because of that as well.
Ubuntu is a Debian derivative as well, along with lubuntu, and has the Gnome desktop as their default.
They are helpful food for thought!