I have a ZaReason Strata Pro 13" with an SSD. The processor is by no means fast, but its fast enough for coding & web design. Any heavier work (like high-res

I have a ZaReason Strata Pro 13" with an SSD. The processor is by no means fast, but its fast enough for coding & web design. Any heavier work (like high-res graphics, video editing, or intensive compiling) would probably be annoying. Its a good laptop with Ubuntu 10.10, only thing not working is suspend automatically when the lid is closed. Money no object and you need Linux than a ThinkPad would be your best bet. Expensive, but awesome keyboards and pretty durable & reliable. You can install Linux on a MBP as a commenter has already mentioned, but you have to install a weird open source EFI thing for boot, and it'd be tricky to get support for the newest hardware. Another option is to use Ubuntu in VirtualBox on OS X. You can install all of your favorite Linux packages in OS X, but they're patched and you can't always get the latest release without some work. AFAIK all of the open-source package management systems for OS X are source based so you get to watch things compile. I used to have a MBP and compiling new software was always annoying to me.