I switched to crunchbang when I got a new laptop and it's a pleasure to work on and has been useful for getting more experience in terminal. Building your own menus has also helped me keep everything very streamline, I only add what is actually necessary, rather than having tons of programs I used once or twice waste space.

For vps/server I prefer centos/debian.

edit: also wanted to add that crunchbang has run much faster for me than lubuntu which I previously was using. Generally ~200-250mb ram, boots extremely quick as well. It will run great on an old junk pc, or a new workstation.

I love Crunchbang, but I've found that Openbox often leads to chronic customization syndrome, especially because you have to customize somewhat, so if you're prone to that sort of thing, be careful.