I have just tried out a live CD of Ubuntu 6.10. Everything was detected and worked. Only thing was it picked up the built the WLAN and called it eth1 rather than the usual wlan0. No biggie but something that caught me setting up the network.
Granted the notebook is not the highest spec in the range (no 3D acceleration) and basic specs, it still ran really well of the CD. Compared to my girlfriends Acer TravelMate 2355LC. Her notebook was older but then again isn’t Linux more compatible with older hardware?
I think in future I will ask the shop people to let me insert the live CD and see how compatible the computers are with Ubuntu / Linux before buying online.