And that is exactly why Ubuntu has LTS releases. It is a good plan for
people like you. I am already using Maverick and while i like it better it
actually is no faster and GNOME is in for big changes that I am sure that
many users will not like. The argument over GNOME 3 will be a lot like KDE
users experienced with KDE 3.4 vs 4. Now most KDE users have converted, but
GNOME users may take even more time to get used to GNOME as it is very
different. So far, Maverick is not any different as GNOME 3 will make its
debut in Natty.

You might want to consider enabling the backports, though. It involves just
cutting and pasting one line into your sources list.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports