Ok, not another which box to buy
Currently I use a dell inspiron 5150 which works over all. There have been a few issues. Including locking up on a fairly regular basis with both debian and ubuntu distros. (A completely intolerable issue) However, Slackware works great!


Anyways, I am looking for a new laptop.
I do some gaming, graphics editing, music, word processing, faxing, and of course browsing on the net.
I am looking for a dual core processor, plenty of memory out of the box, a decent hdd. I think the nvidia video driver is a better choice over ati radeon.

HCL has numerous laptop reviews which makes it hard to decide.

As you already know, there are a bazillion articles out there on this very question.

I would look more at the specific hardware elements....e.g.:
Harddrives, CD, DVD, etc. are not likely to be an issue
Nvidia seems to take Linux support seriously--the "official" driver from them has always worked well for me.
Intel has strong support for their wireless devices

You may struggle with ACPI, fingerprint readers, etc., but probably the same level of aggravation with all major brands

The other (obvious?) option is that there are now quite a few vendors selling laptops pre-configured with Linux.

I use Thinkpad T61 w/intel graphics, no problems there

+1

Had mine for about 6 months. Works great. Everything from Ubuntu to Slackware works on there.

Another +1 for Thinkpads. I've owned a T40 since 2004 and it still runs perfectly under a dual boot SuSE/WinXP configuration

...and note that this doesn't mean that you have to buy the laptop with Linux installed (you can if you want, but if you really want dual boot...), but, if you do buy one of these, you do know that it is possible to configure every piece of hardware that is configured as it comes out of the factory...

I have one of the non-Thinkpad Lenovos and it works fine apart from the fingerprint reader, webcam and sound. This is largely because I don't care enough about these to put in any effort to get them working (particularly the webcam, which I'd rather not have working); sound would be nice but, not worth any effort, as it is likely to burst into life without effort when I upgrade.

That said, I'd now have rather have bought a Thinkpad, because I really dislike the trackpad (occasionally I brush it by mistake) and the trackpoint (nipple) that I had on my previous, ancient, Thinkpad was a better option. At the time, I needed to dual boot windows and I didn't want anything to do with Vista and couldn't find a Thinkpad with XP at a sensible price.