what are some good laptops and compatible distros, with plenty available drivers. i heard suse was good with toshibas, sound card, wifi, etc. all worked out of the box.

Toshiba Satalite works great with Mandrake10.1

i was looking into getting a dell inspiron 9300 but dell doesn't have much linux support so i wanted to make sure there was a compatable distro.

I have a dell inspiron, the network sort of works and the graphics doesn't, that is as far as i have got as yet. Oh, also dell make two hidden partitions on your system so that you can restore the computer to its initial state and if you resize and add new partitions then the restore thing breaks. I have just put my partitions back to the initial state and the recovery thing has started working again.

Think I will stick with windows, at least until the laptop gets a bit older.

I have worked on a modern toshiba recently and the restore program comes on two disks and that formats/repartitions your hard drive I *think* so at least with that you can get back to the factory state if you ever wished to.

Your looking at your Linux support right now!

Also check the LQ HCL specifically the Laptops category. Speaking for myself, I've got an IBM T40 that it first rate. They're a bit more expensive than others but IMO they are worth every penny. Good luck with it whatever choice you make -- J.W.

i would like to get an ibm (im using an aptiva right now) but im not sure i can afford it. i need a lot of features and even though they offer those features, they offer them at a higher price. but they are solid.