...Ubuntu works as expected on my HP laptop. No major problems (the second time around -- the first time there was a bad HD which caused me to return said unit.)

Wireless works via ndiswrapper-utils. Just copy the .inf and .sys files from the provided Windows driver CD, and you're off and running. I haven't tried any of the special digital media drives yet, but everything else works. Even the screen resolution is up to the native 1440x950 with one of the more recent releases of xorg. (When first installed 3 weeks ago, it was stuck at 1024x768.)