I don't want to rain on your parade. I think that 10.04 is great too.
However, the new kernel gets much of the credit for the things that you
mention. My Wacom tablet and mouse work perfectly too, but now it works in
any of the distros that use the newer kernel. This does not mean that 10.04
is not great, just that the kernel developers are doing great work on which
Canonical builds.

I tried to update my laptop from 8.04 to 10.04 all last night and today it won't
work at all...the installation process was not able to install many of the
pieces of 10.04 and now I can't even access the 8.04 ubuntu there. Help! I
think I might need to create a 10.04 ISO and wipe out everything...but I hope
not

What you are attempting to do is to upgrade from LTS to LTS which should
work, however I have never done this as I use the intervening releases. The
upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04 is a big one as there are so many changes that it
is hard to know what went wrong. Lots of potential for disaster, IMO. You
don't say what you are left with when you boot. Do you get a GUI at all? Do
you have a command prompt? Have you tried the recovery mode in grub?

Please let us know more about what happens precisely when you boot. If you
can get a GUI or command prompt then all is not lost. If it just hangs then
things are more complicated.

yes I get a command prompt
I need to go find the root password that came with the lc2000 or I can do
nothing in the command prompt either

Your password will be unchanged. i.e. the same as you had with 8.04.

At prompt type sudo apt-get -f install

It will ask for your password, but just use what you had before when you
tried to upgrade. It should give you a list of applications it wants to
install. Just say Y and cross your fingers.

When it is done you can type login. Give your user name and password. Then
type startx

If this fails then you can try to complete the upgrade with these
instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades/Hardy

Personally I would never have attempted the upgrade and would backup and do
a fresh installation. It is not too late and can be still done.

My reasons for this are major changes from 8.04 to 10.04: grub to grub2,
ext3 to ext4, upsplash to Plymouth, old video drivers to new which rely on
kernel mode setting (which may be why you do not get a GUI), old kernel to
new, and removal of HAL. There is just too much to go wrong, IMO.

it didn't work at all

I cannot boot...Grub can see the 8.04 stuff and tries to boot but too many
pieces have been removed during the installation that boot cannot complete and
it drops me into a shell

NO GUI

recovery mode does the same thing. Won't work either

I also teach Linux and in today's class I had everyone download the ubuntu 10.04
ISO image, burn it to a DVD-R that they can take home and also save the
downloaded image in their computer and create a new VM using it (we already have
VMs with ubuntu 9.10). Well there seems to be a bug in the VM using 10.04; it
creates it fine but when you first log in the keyboard is ignored...until you
use the accessibility option to enable the onscreen keyboard and use it to enter
your password...then you need to restart the VM