I was looking for a new laptop also, and I found pretty good deals for a i5 based Acer TimelineX, which I was able to add 8GB of ram and a 256GB Samsung SSD for

I was looking for a new laptop also, and I found pretty good deals for a i5 based Acer TimelineX, which I was able to add 8GB of ram and a 256GB Samsung SSD for ~$1000 total. I also run Ubuntu 12.04 on it, and documented all of the non-intuitive things you might run into[1]. Battery life has been 8-9 hours (my normal windows include Chrome, Sublime Text Editor and a terminal). I also take advantage of the HDMI port and hook up a much larger screen when I get home. The Samsung SSD performs great, and the system boots up in what feels like maybe 5 seconds, I haven't taken a stop watch to it yet. 1: http://www.sharms.org/blog/2012/04/finding-a-great-ubuntu-linux-laptop-for-1000/ http://www.sharms.org/blog/2012/04/finding-a-great-ubuntu-li...