Be careful about being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Lots of time gets sunk into getting and keeping all of the features (that you'll end up wanting) running o

Be careful about being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Lots of time gets sunk into getting and keeping all of the features (that you'll end up wanting) running on Linux boxes. I did Thinkpads for as long as they've been around and fought that fight over and over and over again. Then I finally switched my laptops (and only my laptops :-) to Apple Powerbooks. Fully outfitted it was basically the same price as the high-end Thinkpads.