Native is easy enough if you're willing to either shop around (our Samsung Q330 i3 took minimal messing around with for 11.10 and "just worked"™ for 12.04) or

Native is easy enough if you're willing to either shop around (our Samsung Q330 i3 took minimal messing around with for 11.10 and "just worked"™ for 12.04) or pay somebody. You say you're willing to pay so take a look at people like Zareason and System76 -- people who design the hardware around what will work in Linux. You pay them over the odds, they support you. But don't get hung up on some features. Battery life is one of those where everybody seems to get the same drop vs Windows. Yeah, I'd really like those bugs found and fixed but it's not going to affect my purchasing decisions. If I need long battery life, I just look at bigger batteries (or slower CPUs). Graphics is another interesting topic. I'd also go out of my way to avoid dual-GPUs (Optimus et al) for the moment. They do work (bumblebee, ironhide, tbp, etc) but having to prepend things with optirun can get annoying - plus they're another power drain.