unfortunately without a Consumer Reports subscription I do not think more detailed data is available from the link I posted. nor does it mention costs and cross sections of what laptops they surveyed. I have to assume they tried to balance across the manufacturers to gather the data since 1000 laptops from one manufacturer vs 100 from another would not provide balanced data. All it basically stated was that failure rates across manufacturers were essentially equal. I too would like to see more detailed data.

no worries I don't feel attacked. I do all the purchasing here and it's been Dell and Lenovo laptops (for business). I've been happier with the performance of the Dells, and have one Lenovo that came with a bad memory socket, which of course wasn't discovered until the warranty was up and we tried to upgrade the memory.

I did try to purchase a toughbook for our field service guys but upper mgmt wouldn't approve the higher priced machine. since our field techs need a serial port and they would be lugging it all over the place it made sense to me. The toughbook series of laptops seem to be the only notebooks that still have built in serial ports..

Either way I've never found a laptop to be a good replacement for a high performance desktop machine, especially if the goal is gaming. I'd rather do a high-end desktop machine to game on and a lightweight laptop for carrying around. after lugging this old Dell laptop around all day it feels as if my arm is going to fall off..

I am back from an awesome vacation in Croatia

Now I am going to check what's on the market today. If I can't find what I am looking for then I am going to buy a Coreboot ASUS eee-like netbook and upgrade my desktop PC with a Coreboot AMD motherboard and ATI card for gaming&co.

I love Dell Inspiron E1705. Nicest laptop ever seen.

However, it's outside of your specs. It's a big machine.

For one thing, notebook and laptop are used either way. These portable computers do produce a lot of heat. For example my Dell Inspiron 1520 gets as hot, 108 degree F, at the surface on the bottom during idle. Sure you can put the notebook computer on your lap, but soon your lap will be hot and be uncomfortable.

Odd number of memory modules hurts dual-channel memory performance. Even numbers of modules are better for dual-channel memory setups. Though adding four memory modules instead of using two does consumes more power. Consuming more power does produce more heat.

IMHO, Intel has been monopolizing the 80x86 market for years, so AMD is having a hard time making a dent. AMD is doing better than other 80x86 competitors. AMD based notebooks are rare since Pentium M made a big splash. Though I do think AMD products have the least problems using Linux than Intel.

You should based the decision of a notebook computer based on portability, performance, and features/price. A 15.4 inch notebook will hurt performance because its size can not provide cooling that is necessary for high-end components. I suggest go with a 2 GHz or slower processor with this size. A dedicated video card can be used with this size, but the cooling capability will hurt it when buying a high end model. I got a GeForce8 8400M GS and it is hot, so this is a limit for this size. The hard drive also produces heat, so a 5400 RPM or slower is better. A SSD can be used to produce little heat and provide higher performance, but syslog will decrease the lifespan of the SSD significantly. A 15.4 inch notebook scores a mid portability, but can score higher if using a high capacity battery pack. The features depend what can be upgraded and/or added. The features can increase the weight which will hurt portability. Features does hurt the price, so be careful adding upgrades if you are on a budget. The price after some upgrades can rise up to $2000.

I can game on my Dell Inspiron 1520 because I pick a decent video card and processor to play games at an OK setting. The quality is average, but the cooling needs to be improved a lot. The following is what it contains at a final cost of $1400 after some discounts and delay shipping.

Intel T7300 (2 GHz X 2 /w 4 MB shared L2 cache)
GeForce8 8400M GS
2 GB DDR2-667 (1 GB X 2 DDR2-667 memory modules)
DVD Rewritable (PATA)
Fujitsu 160 GB SATA
34/54 Express Card
Intel WiFi 3945
100 Mb Broadcom NIC
9-cell Li-ion Battery (provides about 4 to 6 hours battery usage)

If you do not mind buying overseas, Cyberpower PC has some MSI notebooks that are good. It is the only company that I found that actually gives you a selection for different WiFi brands with AMD notebooks. They include Intel and not Atheros, so not much of selection for Linux users.

ASUS also makes good notebooks from what I read, but you need to check what hardware they put in their models. A lot of hardware in their notebooks have poor support in Linux. Lenovo is good and sturdy brand too that is known to work well in Linux. Lenovo does not provide a way to customize the desire notebook model to suit you. If they do provide a way to customize, they do a poor way of doing it.

If you are selecting a model from Dell, HP, Compaq, Acer, Gateway, and several others, select their business versions. Usually they have higher quality than the consumer version.

I do not recommend finding notebooks that are compatible with coreboot. If there are models out there, the selection will be a few or just one. I suggest have a whole separate project to setup corebook for your notebook computer future life.

@Electro: Wow you seem to know a lot about laptops I was already afraid of laptops being a huge pain in the ass but this kinda confirms it. I think I am not going to be able to be both mobile- and gaming with a laptop. Too bad. I need a gaming rig desktop PC (which is not a problem at all for me to put together without help) and one of these netbooks for being mobile (they are cool and I no longer want to take this 15,4" widescreen bastard with me to the backyard).

Does anybody have experiences with netbooks like the ASUS Eee, Acer One, etc? Are the SSD's of any quality? Have you tried installing distro's on it? How about Coreboot? Doesn't the Olpc and Eee have it?