Stay with RH9? / Compiling Kernel is Better?

Two unrelated questions:

1) I use RH9, and like Frank and Austin, I see April coming. I know
there are many more like us on this list.

The prospect of backing my data up; formatting the harddrive and doing a
fresh install of [fedora, debian, whatever], then reinstalling all the
applications I use, and then all my data -- gives me the hives. I'm too
much a newbie.

Nothing is worse than getting stuck midstream. I can't afford it! If I
undertake step A in that process, I must be confident of getting all the
way to step N. I cannot tolerate bogging down -- this machine is
mission-critical for me.

I know there are a lot of people happily running RH7.3 etc. What if I
decide just to ride out 2004 (or 2005) on RH9? Is that a dumb idea?

2) My machine (athlon 2200+) reports itself as an i686 architecture, yet
I regularly install rpms etc. for i386. My kernel is for i386.

If I compile my own kernel on this machine, do I then have an i686
kernel? It that better / faster / more stable?

--- Craig