Which Kernel?

Hello all,

I'm wondering which kernel would be best to use for my configuration with Mepis32. I have a whitebox PC with an ASUS motherboard and AMD XP2100+ proc. When booted to Mepis6, I use 2.6.15-27-k7, and things run smooth as silk. When I first installed Mepis32 I was running the 2.6.15-27-desktop kernel. I have had some performance issues with the desktop kernel when using CPU intensive apps (k9copy, gimp, Kaffeine and others), and some network performance issues between this system and my Mac G4 running either Mac OS X, or Ubuntu 6.10 (SMB transfers SLOW, fish tranfers not too bad). I've chalked most of it up to just being a Beta release.
While doing upgrades with Synaptic, I noticed several different versions of the latest kernel for my config. Desktop version 2.6.15-27.50.1mepis3, k7 version 2.6.15-27.48.1.mepis1 (mepis repo), and k7 version 2.6.15-27.50 (dapper-security repo). Right now, I'm running the k7 version 2.6.15-27.48.1.mepis1, sharing the modem connection to my Mac, running a remote desktop session to the Mac, and the little fishies in KAquaruim are swimming effortlessly (my visual gauge as to how things are running). I'll try burning some CDs and playing with gimp to see what happens.
I like what I see so far. Still the best distro I've tried. Still some glitches getting my oddball ATI FireGL 8800 to work (ATI's fault), Adaptec's 29160 SCSI card still doesn't work, 39160 does (Adaptec's fault), desktop device icons still don't work as advertised (my fault ?). But no show stoppers yet!

Any thoughts would be appreciated.