I happened to have purchased Lenovo laptops because I like the keyboards and generally believe that the reason Apple laptops are better than the majority of Windows laptops is because people are willing to spend more on quality hardware. I prefer the industrial design of Richard Sapper to Jonathan Ives so it was a no-brainer.
After running Windows for a while and getting bored of using KiTTY for SSH I switched to Linux Mint.
I honestly have configured nothing. It all just worked, and installation was less than 10 minutes end-to-end.
I know you will say I got lucky, or that I spent more money... but luck didn't come into it and I spent not a penny more than I did for the Windows machine and good industrial design.
If you just use the system, it just works. I've had zero pain in my personal computing for a long time now. I don't understand the "Linux costs you time" mantra.
its because this mantra is FUD that opponants of GNU/linux often use to discredit it. If you spoke to a businessman who doesn't know his microsoft from his unixes, he might be veryeasily convinced that something which would've costed thousands could've been had for free must have some sort of catch. Because physical goods that you can get for free always has some sort of catch (whether its just for adverts, or whether the "free" month of trials automatically becomes a paid month the 2nd its over etc). Most people aren't equpped to deal with software, simply because its so new and recent, and the brain is evolved to deal with the physical and the now.
You might be going a little strong on the FUD thing though. I think many businesses are tapping into open source and what can be built with it, especially your beloved Linux kernel. Even going so far as companies like Wal-Mart opening an office in Silicon Valley and launching startups. Whether this is all good or bad I can't yet tell. Just as our inclinations are toward physical goods that come in attractive packaging, we have inclinations to try to make all aspects of a business proprietary and confidential with the belief it gives a competitive advantage.
It just feels strange to try to sell something that was never meant ot be commercial and price it high in order to create some illusion in the mind of a purchaser. But maybe that's just me.
The only solution I've come up with is to steer away from hardware that is brand new on the market. Buy stuff that is a few years old.
With an open source OS, it's still going to as fast (probably faster, and certainly more agile) than new hardware coming fresh off the assembly line loaded down with the latest crapware OS.
I'm from Eastern Europe therefore I'm person who looks for cheaper machines usually. Cheaper machines (e.g. not Thinkpads) don't work properly with Linux. E.g. check out GMA500 thread in Ubuntu forums.
As I said I feel terrible saying this about proprietary software. I've worked for companies that sell commercial software. But I'm just being honest. The open source stuff is the best I've used.