Aren't I clever. My 'Hello World' is the shortest representation possible. Admittedly I am using Slashcode as the compiler and runtime environment, but that is just skill on my part in choosing the most appropriate toolset.

Any spelling/grammar freaks or gnaa trolls can go away now.

PS: for extra points which is worse a spelling/grammar freaks or a gnaa troll?

There's nothing to see here. Move along.

If you really want to read my boring(?) journals, go to my Web sites then!

Oh, and trolls like those who support GNAA, suck. God will never let them in Heaven when it is time. :)

1. Pay someone like Qlitech, EmperorLinux or ASA a steep premium to deliver a laptop with Linux installed.
2. Buy a OEM laptop with no OS from someplace like this and investigate the hardware, track down drivers, hope after much pain everything works.
3. Buy a name-brand with Windoze preinstalled and paid for, investiage the hardware, track down drivers, hope after much pain everything works.

Linux-On-Laptops is a good resource, problem is very few of the models currently being sold have entries at LOL (heh).

A fourth option is to watch for a used model that is known to be well supported by existing drivers. This is also the most frugal route, which has a strong appeal.

Will this situation ever change? It could get worse -- the laptop market is growing faster than the desktop market, and the fastest growing portion of the desktop market (I'd bet), "slim" PCs, I suspect has more components in common with laptops than full scale desktops (meaning much worse Linux support).

Arrgh. What a PITA.

Last 24hours, coded in Java, XSLT, SQL, Tcl, Perl, Bash. Hadn't really thought about it before, but such juggling of multiple languages in a single day isn't atypical. For the most part it's a case of using the right tool for the task at hand, though I'd love to replace Tcl and Perl with Ruby. Also glanced at Pliant, E and Haskell for my own amusement.