Why should we try the new 2.5.x kernels (on non production puters!!)..
Here's a small summary of my personal opinions on this matter..

It builds faster..
Never use make dep ever again..
Faster file IO
Enormous block size support (16TB on 32bit systems and 8EB on 64bit )
Kernel preemption (should speed things up)
Process scheduler improvements (is supposed to do miracles on big systems with lots of processes)
Futexes
Speed-ups in threading (pthread and the likes)
Revamped input layer (nice with multi-media keyboards)
Better PNP support (who still uses them ISA devices ??)
More ALSA support and even some new OSS drivers..
Improved AGP (3) support
Faster syscalls (Pentium pro and later (yeah aslo AMD))
Better framebuffer support
ATAPI CD recording speeded up !! (I'm getting that 52X CDRW drive !!)
Improved EXT3 and ReiserFS support (yey new and faster features)
New BIOS extentions.. (and they even support my Toshiba lappy)
Major ACPI updates (now my hibernate works fine)
CPU frequency scaling should make my battery last way longer then it did.
Networking updates lik more Bridging options and compressed packets..
Crypto: kernel space MD5, DES, Tripple DES, Blowfish and more..

So I'd say try it

More on this here:

http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt