Stable's entire selling-point is to be the Linux of yesterday, tomorrow. You probably would have had better luck with a distribution that didn't intentionally aim to be ancient.

A year-old laptop is just getting into the sweet spot for Linux in general and Fedora in particular. The new kernels that keep on coming into the release will help with hardware compatibility.

Debian Stable is definitely not so hot on a year-old laptop, though a newer kernel from Backports can really help.

I have a 3-year-old HP laptop and have been running Debian Stable on it for about 6 months now. It's been a fairly seamless experience, as these things go.

For newer laptops, I definitely recommend Fedora. It's the easiest way to get new kernels -- which are what you need for new hardware -- on the regular.

Debian Stable is never going to be a “laptop” distro, to be fair. One needs Ubuntu, Fedora, or some other quick-turnaround distro.