3. top-of-the-line HW ~1500 Euros with linux where I'll have to babysit and troubleshoot every time OS upgrades What criteria determine "top of the line"? "Top

3. top-of-the-line HW ~1500 Euros with linux where I'll have to babysit and troubleshoot every time OS upgrades What criteria determine "top of the line"? "Top of the line" for what, exactly? To reduce that question to the absolute absurd, "What laptop is 'top of the line' for deep sea fishing?" My criteria for the best Linux laptop is "What peripheral chips and components are best suited to current Linux driver code?". Incidentally, have you ever tried to install vanilla Windows on a HP laptop? It'll take you days to track down all of the various drivers needed for all of those wierd and wonderful and quirky peripheral chips, that HP buys cheaply in bulk, just to get it working with any reasonable usefulness. (Which is just one of the reasons why HP laptops are on my "Never, ever buy one of these" list.) In my own case, I buy Lenovo laptops with Intel peripheral chips. I have a ten-year-old T410 which still works well with Linux, although I replaced it about six months back with a Lenovo P53. With both of these laptops, I can install a flawless Linux distro within about 30 minutes. Recovering Windows on these same machines takes literally hours.