This comment may seem terribly unhelpful, but trust me in a few months time if you don't listen to it you will likely wish you had.
_dont_ buy from PC World, I bought a rather nice PC from there, got home (after some problems instore I might add) off comes XP, on goes Linux

Hard drive died within months (and no i didn't accidentally break it with hdparm

) so I contacted them and said my HD's died, got receipt etc. Like a tit I said the fact I put Linux on there doesn't effect my warranty does it?
Moral of the story is, if you do buy from them and it breaks don't tell them you put Linux on there, especially if its something like the hard drive - because with a bust hard drive they would never know

- Most laptops are fairy well supported, if you see something by IBM then its probably your best bet although i have heard that Toshiba are quite well supported. If your not sure then your best bet is too look at the demo one, use the windows device manager to make a note of all the hardware in it, come home and google the night away before going back the next day and buying it (if the hardwares supported of course

)
Incidentally if you do get one and find that it needs a bit of tweaking, i have found a good cure for that I-can't-be-bothered feeling. Wipe the harddrive and put W2k on there, by the time you have finished installing your anti-spyware and anti-virus tools et al not to mention office etc. you find yourself much much more motivated
