Quote Originally Posted by variant
once youv done it a few times its easy, you set a few commands going and you can configure the kernel while other things are happening. if you manualy configure the kernel it only takes a few minnits to compile (if your needs a small and system fast) unpacking all the tarballs takes the longest. writing the config files is hardly any time at all (fstab, grub, networking - 10 or 15 lines..) 35 minnits is as fast as i could do it I think.

edit: not using genkernel either.
I just mean for somebody who's never installed Gentoo before, as it seems the case is for the original poster. But for truly using all pre-config'd/pre-compiled packages, I figured that I should add in genkernel for completeness.
Me, personally, wouldn't tuch GRP Packages or Genkernel with a 4234 foot pole.