It may be of interest to look at the middle ground.
I chose an Acer Aspire 5050. They change the models frequently, with
models having another 4 digits. Thus the wifi modem can vary. I ended up
with a Broadcom, recent Ubuntu Feisty seems to work fine with it. The
webcam and "card reader" don't, though these are not an issue for me (I
did keep the Win XP and shrank the partition before loading Ubuntu).
Main thing for me was the 120GB drive, 1GB Ram and DVD writer, along
with 4.3 lbs wt. The price was $800 from Future Shop. Screen is 14" and
wide format. Windows seems to fatten up photos ("Does this computer make
me look fat?"), but Linux is OK, which may be worth noting. I had to use
Alsamixergui to turn on "surround" to get sound, but it works fine.
The processor is dual core Turion and fast enough for me to do real
work, though clearly not a speed demon.
Mainly I needed to have a drive big enough that I can carry a lot of my
legacy files of academic work etc., so storage was more important than
power. Also I am getting tired of lugging heavy stuff.
JN