Thank you for that tip. I'm hoping to keep the windows partition though. My idea is to reduce the windows partition to say 80GB, to free up approximately 400GB for the Ubuntu installation. If I delete the second partition won't the windows installation be lost?
At the risk of repeating myself, you can delete the recovery partitions without intefering with Windows - but you will lose the option to factory restore from the hidden partitions. If you create recovery DVDs and keep them safe you can still use those later instead, if you choose to remove the recovery partitions from the disk now.
I think I'm going to need it!
No luck required, just a little patience and plenty of reading.
I'm wondering whether what I want to do is even possible. Perhaps I need to be looking at a tool like Ghost?
It is. As I described, I did exactly this with a GParted Live CD on a regular retail HP laptop. Exactly the same circumstances as yours. Just make sure you back up anything you've added to Windows before you start. If you haven't put anything new on the laptop, then the recovery DVDs you create first in Windows will restore the machine back to factory defaults almost no matter how badly you might mess it up.
Peter.