i'm curently researching laptops as well.
ibm's are highly recommended, but use ATI stuff. But they have the best keyboards and the owner of Emperor Linux told me flat out that anything after a T-21 is gonna work well with Linux. He also will put LInux on your laptop for 350 bucks if it's a model that he uses in his store. His people write a special kernel just for the laptop and the distro you want. I believe he supports FC3. so if you buy a IBM t-21 or later and then have trouble you can pay them 350 bucks for an install and it comes with a recovery partition and a user's manual specific to your model and distro.
i think the price is too high personally. But the IBM is worth it. The keyboard alone has sold me.
I bought a compq r3000 presario and have it all working fine, but i wouldn't do it again had i had the chance to. he offered to install linux on it for me but said it would cost more thatn 350 bucks because he has no experience writing kernels for compaq/hp.
bottom line:
buy a IBM t-21 or later
or a dell with nvidia card
don't buy HP/Compaq - not that they're impossible to setup, mine works, but major headache
also check out emperor linux site and give them a call!
talk with the technician that answers the phone. they don't mind discussing which laptop you should buy if you may consider letting the isntall linux for you. It can be a real education.
