I am looking to purchase a new laptop as my current computer is becoming rather dated. I would like to purchase a laptop with a Linux distro installed and ready to use 'out of the box'.

I am not into playing games, however I would like to use Skype, my current graphics card does not allow me to use Skype. Apart from that my main usage of the computer is creating and editing OpenOffice documents, email and scanning the internet.

I was looking at the Asus X58LE Laptop from http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/products/laptops/

I am a novice in computing terms, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If that's your coice, It's more than adequate even for my needs and I do far, far more than you state you do to fill your needs.
Going on your stated needs the Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 is even more than adequate.
Bigger isn't always better.
I use an old Dell i486 32 bit with 2 gigs of ram, 160 gig ATA hard drive with a nvidia video card and play a few games, run two web sites and a message board. email from two accounts, play music, do minor changes/builds for my websites, build packages, watch movies, surf, all my banking, download and upload via ftp like a demon at times and manage the small network I have.
Old Betsy performs marvelously.

Here's the link that you could check out.

You know that you can buy laptop without any OS and then install a distro that you want, just remember that some distros don't have all necessary things by default to make your new laptop work "out of the box". Some do and are beginner friendly like SimplyMEPIS or Linux Mint. Usually it's about drivers and codecs.

You could still buy a LapTop with THAT O/S on it - for the right price - & dual boot until you are confident that the lnx O/S of your choice, will work A.ok - then zap THAT other O/S.

check with the lists at http://linuxlaptops.com/ your much better off with a 100% linux solution to the hardware drivers
watch out for broadcom wifi some of these work with the wrapper and some do not
even with the latest windows drivers
with out knowing witch work and witch do not with out 20 hours trying to get it to work
it's best to just stay away from broadcom wifi