Gentoo Help for Thinkpad

I got a Thinkpad T61p and I am having trouble installing linux. I wanted to install gentoo since it has a package for the intel wireless n drivers. Ive installed xp and left a partition for linux.
When I install gentoo with the live cd, x windows fails to start. When i try to run the installer, I copy all the files and get past the part where it asks for the root password. After that, gentoo is using emerge to do some work and it fails. It is errno17; something about a file existing. I have tried the 64 bit and 32 bit version of the gentoo live cd. I am hoping someone here can help me out. I have no idea what is causing these problems. I have never used linux before; used freebsd for a while, but there are no intel wifi drivers for it, so i cant use it.
I have one more thing I am going to try(installing sabayon linux). I'd prefer to get gentoo running, so any ideas would be appreciated.

Here are my system specs:
Intel C2D T7500 @ 2.2GHZ
1 GB Ram
WUXGA screen
Nvidia Quadro FX 570m w/256mb
120 GB HD

 

If you've never used Linux before, I'd recommend another distro before jumping in with Gentoo. I'm currently running Fedora 7 with a T61p which was not too much trouble to setup. For someone completely new, try using Ubuntu Gutsy or Open Suse 10.3 since both of those distros have iwl4965 support.

 

Ive tried ubuntu before and i hate the package manager. Ive heard good things about gentoo. Not completely new to the unix world, ive used freebsd.

 

i tried to install gentoo too, but there were just so many things that didnt work on my laptop so i said screw it, and chose a different distro until i found one that nearly supported my laptop out of the box (which was fedora)

i got my intel 802.11abgn +BT working by updating the kernel in fedora, then it worked fine.