I have Feisty on my 2-year-old laptop, and it runs great. I have Compiz and Beryl installed, and surprisingly my laptop runs Compiz and Beryl without any significant performance loss, although it seems Compiz is less memory-hogging. But everything works. I downloaded Sun Java 6 JRE last night via Synaptics without having to add an extra repository or something like Automatix or EasyUbuntu.
I may yet go back to Ubuntu. I really did like a lot of what I saw. It was definitely comfy. I mean...I actually giggled after I got done with my first session last week....and I've been at a keyboard every day of my life for the last 25 years.
But I'm still looking for just the right fit for me in the Linux world.
BTW...since Simply Mepis v6.x and above is based on Ubuntu, do you know if it uses Synaptics? I haven't even loaded the live CD yet so I don't know much about SM.