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That and the whole design issue.

I want to buy a laptop that looks nice, so sue me. Actually I had a discussion about this very topic today with someone.

Any non-Apple laptop suggestions that don't look ugly and will run some *nix variation?

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Surprisingly, one of the best looking laptop designs I've seen in a while was one by Nokia, of all people. Unfortunately, it is a Netbook, and has all of the associated issues, and I have no idea about its linux support. But from a design aspect, it looks nice.

http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/mini-laptops/nokia-boo...

Now, if only we could locate a more powerful alternative.

Nice one, I like it.

I just got a Dell Vostro 3400, and am quite impressed. Clean design, multitouch trackpad, nice battery. Just missing the MagSafe power. It's the first PC laptop I could imagine myself using every day, if I couldn't use a MacBook.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/us/segments/bs...

Thinkpad. You can't beat the Darth Vader styling.

Absolutely. My brain must just not be wired right to appreciate Apple's designs because I think MacBooks aren't all that pretty. I liked the look of the iPhone when it first came out because the rest of the cellphone market was hideous, but by now Apple has fallen behind and even with the 4th gen phone the look is somewhat stale.

ThinkPads, on the other hand, have barely changed at all but still look like you can sit down and get some bloody work done.

The design is inspired by the Japanese bento box. There's an interesting note on it here: http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=72

If you're looking for a Netbook, the Eee PC 1005/1008HA are, in my opinion, at least as good looking as Apple's laptop offerings. (They also have the best keyboard/touchpad of any netbook I've tried.)

The nice thing about buying a MacBook is that it's much easier to comparison shop on price. I almost bought my netbook from a major chain until I realized they sold it with a 3-cell battery instead of the awesome 6-cell battery in the one I found online. On the other hand, I just helped a friend buy a MacBook, and we knew we were comparing apples to apples while looking for the best deal. Also, hats off to Apple for not loading their machines with crapware when you buy from a retail store.

Hell yeah! While there are some nice looking Notebooks, PC cases are especially awful. What puzzles me is that this is even true for 300$+ aluminium pc cases specificaly made to please the design-sensitive crowd (e.g. Lian Li). It seems all respectable designers doing computer cases work at Apple. I believe there is a huge market waiting to be served, so: get rich quick! Make beautiful pc cases for a reasonable price so I can finally buy one!

I know what you mean, I have one of Lian Li's "mini fridge" cases because it has a ludicrous number of HD bays. But I also have an Antec p182, and it's frickin awesome: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129... (slightly newer model)

I was nervous about buying an HP laptop, but bought a HP Envy 15 recently because it was the only thing with the specs I wanted (1920x, good graphics card, SSD+HDD combo, fairly thin and light.) It's turned out well so far; it's good-looking, feels sturdy, runs Linux fine (although you need a recent kernel for some particular BIOS-related patches.)

But how badly did you get screwed on the price? Did you pay the two grand list price, or grab one at $1,199? http://dealnews.com/Loaded-HP-ENVY-15-Core-i7-Quad-1.6-GHz-1...

This practice of obscure and arbitrary discounting is at least as annoying as the obscure and arbitrary lineups.

Somewhere in between; I ended up paying about $1600 after a $400 discount. I felt it was a pretty good price -- thing has basically the best laptop specs you can buy without having a 10-pound 18-inch behemoth. I agree that it's bizarrely arbitrary. (Something's odd about that one you linked, though -- the graphics card is that of a first-generation one, not the ones they're selling now.)

I bought an Acer Aspire One a year or so ago, and I've been quite happy with it. It runs Ubuntu 10.04 with no issues. (I did have some trouble with wifi on 9.04 and had to compile madwifi from source to get it working, but it was fixed in 9.10.)

Used MacBook Pro. Seriously, they are the best laptops around right now and if you buy used they will cost a usual amount of money.

The Sony Vaio series laptops are generally pretty slick.

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