I want a linux laptop, with good battery life, stable suspend/resume, solid CPU performance, 3d graphics sufficient for light gaming, and a high-quality fit-and-finish. Which one do I buy?
Edit: Installed neverputt on this machine. Works fine with the settings maxed out and the resolution at full screen.
And yeah, it's a complete tank. The only downside I have is that both models seem to have issues with Sandforce SSDs and resuming from sleep, but that's a hardware issue instead of an OS one.
Also, the mobile broadband does not work under Linux, despite the fact that the datasheet for the card says "Linux is fully supported". It will show up as a serial port (well, four of them) after you edit the kernel source (sierra.c) to contain this card's USB vendor/product ids. But without a firmware loader and firmware, you can't actually use the broadband. I feel that this will be fixed soon, though, as the Gobi 2000 is quite popular for Linux and this is the Gobi 3000.
The GPS does work.
If you feel adventurous, burn a copy of Ubuntu on a USB stick and go to a computer store. Last time I did that I promised the salesman I wouldn't harm their display computers and the guy let me boot a lot of them under Linux so I could check what worked and what didn't.
I'll soon replace the Acer with a Vostro v130. It's small, light and has a configuration that comes with Linux preinstalled. I'll reinstall it immediately, but it's good to know it works.
Two months ago, me and my father spent two weeks to find one decent laptop for my sister member that was not crippled by a crappy screen, poor battery life, atrocious build quality or weight. And that was meant for a Windows system. We both have jobs, so if we had billed these hours, we could have easily got some really expensive gear just for that.
Adding to that the effort spent for researching hardware compatibility and configuration... This is just nuts.
To come back to the point, I want something that just works. I used to use Linux for several years. Like many others, I ended up with Apple at some point. I simply found out that I preferred to spend money on something decent over wasting time to find a cheap deal.
I recently switched from a Mac and I definitely miss it at times but there is enough in the thinkpad/ubuntu combo to hold me over for now (openbox, good tiling managers, source code that is open to scrutiny etc).
If you do want to make the change, you might as well get used to the disparity now ;)