My HP Compaq nx9005 came with WinXP preinstalled and preconfigured, but also came with a HP branded winXP cd, so when grub fried my XP partition I was able to completely reinstall from scratch, don't know how many other laptop makers supply a disc tho!!

Fujitsu Lifebook.
I had very few problems with this computer. The biggest hurdle is the installation, because the laptop is small enough that the CD drive is external PCMCIA, and thus a floppy boot and drivers are needed. I haven't yet gotten my touchpanel to work, but since I bought this second hand, I think it may be defective hardware.

*addendum: I currently run Debian unstable on it; it's the easiest to install and what not, in my opinion. I've also gotten Mandrake 9.1/9.2 and SuSE 8.2 and Fedora Core 1 on it. Slack (9.0) and RedHat (9) and Vector/College won't install, or I'm too lazy to do what it would take to get it to install. Gentoo's out because the hard disk install is too complicated for my laziness, and it can't boot from it's CD.

I have an HP Pavilion Ze4230 and I wiped it the day I bought it. RedHat ran wonderfully (with a recompile for ACPI). SuSE 9 went on perfectly. So far everything works and no kernel recompile was necessary.

ive got a IBM Thinkpad T20 brill but is a pain when upgrading because the drivers it comes with are usally out of date!

OK, I almost bought a Dell Inspiron 8200 today from www.dallaslaptops.com for about $1200. And I still might go get it tomorrow. Their shop is just down the street from where I'm 'working'.

It's a P4 1.7 ( or close to that)
256MB Memory
40GB HD
DVD RW 8x/CD RW 24x or something close to that
resolution was at 1400 x something
video was geforce2 go or something, 32MB
built in floppy, modem, NIC (3com 3c820 or 920 I think)
a mouse/keyboard port
ieee 1394 port
2 USB ports (1.1 I assume)
It has Windows 2000 Pro on it, not XP!!
They offer no media CD's, only the software already installed.

The guy turned it on and we got an error that the battery was less the 4460mAH. It had a 3800mAH battery in it. He's supposed to get a new battery for it this afternoon.

They also have a 5150, among others, for a little more, but it's P4/3.06GHz, 512MB, 40 GB, CD-RD/DVD. Don't know the other specs, like video and resolution, yet. About $1500.

ACK!!!! and me with no job but I sure wanna get one!! (edit: a laptop that is...)

Any more encouragement/discouragement for me out there on either of these models??

Thanks for all the good input so far...

The Inspiron 8200 is a nice machine. I used one at work for a while. Not sure about Linux support though as it too was a Win2000 Pro machine. The 8200 is very similar in parts to my HP though so I imagine it would work well with Linux.

Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 P4
Running xinerama with a dell trinitron running at 1280x1024 and the laptop display at it's max 1024x768.

I boot linux exclusivly and run vmware with xp within X. <--I love this instead of dual boot.

I have had great luck getting linux going on toshiba's. I did have to build a custom kernel for acpi. Everything else works fine with redhat 9.0 ...

My touchpad stop working for awhile then came back on it's own. I think it's a hardware problem though..

Well, I did it. I bought the Inspiron 8200. I like it so far.

A whole new journey of stuff to learn.

It has Windows 2000 Pro on it and the entire 40GB drive is set as C: . For now, I'm just gonna leave it that way until I get used to the new laptop experience.

I took it to the office where I'm 'working', plugged in a cat5, jumped right on the network. Found and installed the network printer. Downloaded and installed some of the usual stuff, acrobat reader, winzip, mozilla, etc... Went out to Windows Update and fully updated the thing with all of those security patches and fixes and updates. And I didn't even have to go looking for help at a forum or edit any configuration files or.... oops.. (Man, I wish I had access to broadband at home!)

One thing I'm gonna look at doing is just install linux on it (distro undecided at this point, probably slackware, or maybe SuSE 8.2 pro). And then as soon as one of you sends me a million dollars I'll go out and buy vmware and use it to run windows from linux.
Man!! $299.00! Or, #329.00 for me with my 56K.
Anybody got an iso to share?

Edit: Oh, and the display is very bright and clear and sharp. Now my desktop displays look fuzzy and muddy...

I've got an IBM Thinkpad A31P 2GHz 1GB RAM 64MB ATI Fire GL 7800.

Suse 9.0 Pro installing and have had only minimal issues. All HW was detected no trouble there. No wireless yet... I have a Linksys 802.11 G 4 port Router and PCMCIA wireless-g card... still researching that one.....

I have a presario 2100 (2175us). I use mandrake 10. Video, sound and wireless all work but wireless was a bit of a challenge. I'm using the 2.6.3-16 kernel and the 0.10 ndiswrapper source. You have to delete the ndiswrapper module from the kernel source or else the new module will not be found. You also need the latest broadcom wireless drivers. I got them from the following url:

http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R74092us.EXE

Under Linux, you can use the 'unzip' command on the .EXE file to extract the Windows driver. The required .INF file will be named 'AR/bcmwl5a.inf' inside the .EXE file. I got this info from Linuxant tech support. They make driverloader, a commercial wrapper ($20) which I bought in an effort to get this working.

I can't believe the poll does not include Fujitsu.....pshhhh
I have Fujitsu Lifebook C2220, everything works under Linux...even the DVD burner,

So sue me...

There is an Other, Please Specify.

I've got a HP ze4805us running WinXP dualbooting with Fedora Core 2. Have not had all that much trouble with it. Just a matter of getting the wireless working using ndiswrapper and the semantic touchpad drivers working, other than that it's been a real piece o' cake.

Toshiba (unidentified I cant find the model number) I had XP running for ages. Since my gf has two Windoes Laptop I decided to put Debian on it. Needed 3 days, but mostly as I didn't know about the Laptop specific stuff and Kernel 2.6 is too volatile. 2.4 565tsc Kernel went right out of the box just a dselect alsa and fix one driver issue. Then I had a Linux Laptop with all usual bells and whistles. Haven't done the APIC stuff though yet.

My Debian on AMD was up within a couple of hours.

A modyfied Toshiba A10 with a P4-M 2GHz and 40GB 5400rpm 8MB cache Seagate Momentus hdd. No problems at all - everything works - even the toshiba/intel audio-modem-riser winmodem.
X @ 1024x768 24bpp + glxgears @ ~450fps