| Get a Mac, *BSD, or Linux. *BSD will require you to configure your system by hand. OpenBSD is the exception. All *BSDs are picky, so you'd have to look at user's previous experiences with laptops to see which one is the best hardware-compatibility wise. Linux has so many versions, and ease-of-use varies across the board. One things for sure that Ubuntu is one of the easiest I've seen,and the Dell XPS laptops are fully compatible with Linux. Mac is good in that it is a Unix operating system and Apple ensures hardware compatibility. Personally, I'd get a Mac because if you can't find a Mac version of a program then you can install Gentoo Portage on it and install a host of other open source applications developed originally for Linux
on it. |