I've had good luck in the past with Dell and Thinkpads. And actually, the Toshiba did fine too although the UEFI seems a bit buggy.

I'm just getting a new Thinkpad W550s dialed in and so far pretty much everything has worked well - though I haven't yet tried to get the Optimus stuff running, so I'm only running on the intel driver.

The only issue I'm having at the moment with the 550s is that exiting X or switching to a virtual console seems to cause some kind of problem with the timings for the in-built screen causing the display to go wonky. It's very strange as it doesn't happen on external screens and doesn't happen if I kill X with C-A-Backspace.

When my employer asked me which notebook I want, macbook or Dell I chose macbook because I heard that linux runs quite well on macbook.

It is more than one year since I run Slackware64 14.1 on this macbook.
True, everything works (after some googling).

But in comparison to my HP elite book (second hand btw, and Slackware of course), with macbook, it takes longer time to go into suspend (on HP it is almost instantaneous). Also, it seems that booting takes somewhat longer, and after logging in via KDM it seems to take more time to usable state with macbook.

I have 8 gb RAM on both notebooks.

Based on this experience, I would not recommend a macbook.
However, it is nice to have a possibility to dual boot into mac for tax declaration program, navigator software etc.

Just another anecdote for customized, and Windows-tax free, in 2006 I ordered an OS-free customized notebook (12", Clevo-based Pentium M) through avadirect, and never had a problem with it. It continues to serve as a computer for a friend's 9 year old.
For myself, I wouldn't turn down an HP elitebook, but I could never give up my "old" Thinkpads!
I think Didier is on the right track. Just watch out for the bloat/spyware that comes on Lenovo and probably other mfgs machines.
Nuke it from optical media. It's the only way to be sure :^)

Thanks lukameen, good to know. My employer has switched to Dell.
Bill

Latitudes, but I'm always using a bit older HW because when I need power I have my desktop. My current is a 6420 with a baby quadro both NIC's are Intel. I'm getting 10ish hours of battery life with Bumblebee and a 97Wh battery.

If you're thinking about a Dell, Google "dell latitude linux keyboard issue". It seems they've been having some firmware issues on a number of recent latitude models.

I've used HP laptops for years with Linux (Slackware) without hardly any issues other than a hard drive failure. Depending on your needs get either Intel or Nvidia graphics.

Well firstly, thanks all! Lots of interesting thoughts and feedback.

Now the interesting part, it seems that actually my new company has already ordered for me rather than waiting for my feedback.

In case you are wondering, it seems that they ordered a Lenovo Yoga 3, as some others in the company already have these. It would not have been my first choice but I guess it will be OK (also, it is not going to be the only machine I have access to). Having looked around now it seems people have these working reasonably well under Ubuntu and Arch, so I see no reason why I shouldn't get it working well under Slackware.

Nonetheless, thanks again everyone and I hope that others will find this thread useful even if I was not able to benefit from it.

Someone mentioned T440s, I think - I've been using that at work, and the wireless (Realtek RTL8192EE) has been a pain. I used the 3.16 kernel, and it's ok, but periodically locks/freezes. Seems like there's been more work on the driver recently, so I'm currently running kernel 4.1rc2. I'm planning to keep running kernel 4.1 releases, because it seems to be the best option - has anyone found anything different with the Realtek RTL8192EE?

Maybe because he's a developper ? This is just one of maaaany things that could required having one...

Or maybe just because he f****** want one.

Well, I think it's a fair question...

What are you planning to do with that touch-screen, ruario?

Well I will be doing QA for software (which runs on Linux). I want to make sure it works correctly when users use a touch screen, which I expect might be more common in the future.

Actually I am not and never have been a developer (though it is a common misunderstanding). I have a QA background.

I was also the team leader for the Linux team at Opera and for a time, also for Mac. That was somewhat unusual as these teams have usually been run by ex-devs. I suspect this is why people assume I am a developer.

Thinkpad X series, I have X301, X200, X201 and X220 and Slackware is running out of box on each of them, I have only some Wifi speed problems with X301 and X220, but one can live with it. These laptops are a little bit old, but for example the X220 with i5-2520M CPU has still good performance today. Their robust case is very excellent, they are very lightweight and they can be bought used from 150-250$.