I had to check the article date twice. Seems old and kind of just a rant. Just be glad you're not still messing with XFree86 modeline settings or whatever. A

I had to check the article date twice. Seems old and kind of just a rant. Just be glad you're not still messing with XFree86 modeline settings or whatever. Asus makes high quality products at a good price. Their Zenbook line might have something you are looking for. As for Optimus, I used a bumblebee alternative on one that just required a special parent process (optirun or something). The light sensor would give off random keykodes due to a kernel bug that was fixed in master. I put a sticker over the light sensor until this was done. Other than that, everything about the hardware was pretty standard configuration job every step of the way. The latest nvidida drivers are said to support Optimus on Linux. Quite frankly, I enjoyed the battery life immensely when just using the Intel graphics for running Compiz at 60fps no problem.