In all my years with Linux, this is the first laptop on which everything like sound, mike, webcam, wifi, screen resolution, external display, sleep and resume, function keys, even the sd card read/write all work out of the box with Ubuntu 10.10. Amazing!!
Comes with DOS only so no M$ tax on purchase price. Intel Core i3 370M @ 2.4 Ghz, 4gb DDR3 ram, 500Gb hdd, 14" WLED screen. About 35000+
I will recommend this to anyone wanting to use Linux on a laptop.
An earlier Dell AMD model in 2007 which came with dos also worked out of the box on etch. No mucking around with anything. Ofcourse the chipset was AMD, whose specs were available. It is almost trivial to support a device whose specs are available.
I've had consistently good experiences with Linux on Thinkpads. I used to use SuSE in 1999, then switched to Ubuntu a few years back (v7.10, IIRC), and I've always had an easy time with the hardware detection, etc. All my laptops have been Thinkpads. (380XD, then 600, then R40e, now X60s).
Shuvam