Is there a particular wireless chipset I should choose that works better with Ubuntu? Options seem to be: ThinkPad bgn Wireless and then various Intel Centrino variants.
Broadcom wireless cards ought to be avoided at all costs (except they finally saw the light and released an open driver for their latest 802.11N, yay, but likely it's not integrated in any distro yet).
I've no idea what "ThinkPad wireless" actually is.