To OP: Ubuntu is a good choice. No doubt Suse, Fedora or others would also be good. I have four machines running Ubuntu - three desktops and a Dell laptop and all are ultra stable. One 64 bit and three 32 bit installations. If you are used to Windows desktop then KDE may be a little more familiar looking than Gnome. In that case you would want Kubuntu rather than Ubuntu. I perfer KDE but it really is a matter of preference. Wine might be worth a try, but I think that a VM setup such as Vmware is a better idea. There are other VM possibilities as well - Zen, Sun have a free one whose name escapes me at the moment and there is KVM which is now standard in the Linux kernel. It might be worth a quick look at the Ubuntu support forums to see if there have been any issues with the particular laptop that you have. Also remeber that if your linux distro doesn't have a wireless driver for your hardware (becuase the hardware manufacturers don't release proper specs) that in many cases a Windows driver can be used in conjunction with something called the NDIS wrapper.
With the caveat that you didn't specify what you actually need to do with the laptop... Unless you're in the kernel tinkerer class and building your own software (and even if you are probably), the best Unixy laptop you can get is a MacBook Pro. Wonderfully useful GUI on top, BSD underneath, lots of real professional-quality third-party apps, great development environment, lots of nice wrappers so you don't have to deal with open source grundiness (unless you want to - the hood is poppable at any time), trivial to run Windows-in-a-Window (or multiboot, if that's the preference). Going full-time linux - in any distribution - has major PITA factor if what you really want is "it just works". How emotionally attached are you to the Lenovo?
In what way ? These days you just put the Ubuntu distro CD in and it just works - just one CD has all the drivers etc etc. Can't say that for Windows. If you are running or developing Java apps, Linux is a clear choice over MAC. JDK and runtime are always more up to date than for Apple. You also have choice of Netbeans or Eclipse for an IDE. Both good.
I am no longer attached to IBM / Lenovo now the collaberation between IBM and Lenovo is coming to an end. Recent models have seen some changes that I was not too keen on, e.g. the nice quiet Hitachi hard disks being replaced by noisy and rattling Seagates, the nice IPS screen being dumped and now stuck with a screen that has terrible backlight bleed. It does not miss a beat and I replaced the hdd with the most silent 7200 rpm Hitachi that I could find and it is wonderfull in that regard. I am using it for trading - running Tradestation 2000i in which my late father coded some special stuff. I am not lookjng forward to have to recode that in another environment, rather spend the time trading. Neither am I prepared to have someone else doing the coding for the obvious reasons. Toshibas were once in use here but the superior software support of IBM / Lenovo made dad switch and he never looked back. But that era is coming to an end. I did look at some Toshibas but then discovered that some models (Satelite?) had problems with overheating when running hard. I have some vague memory of MAC's also being prone to running too warm or unexpected shutting down which is not something I want to experience. I downgraded to XP SP3 on the T61p and have been happy but the writing is on the wall so I am starting to explore alternatives. I must admit that I am not a fan of glossy screens, too much reflection for business computing (fine for watching movies though but that is not why I have a laptop) Maria
Windows sucks and I have no idea why people put up with all the hassle for nothing-special capability. No argument there. Also no argument that for some kinds of development you may well be better off with one of the major Linux distros. The OP wasn't particularly explicit about what the needs where, the impression given is more "user" than "developer".
Absolutely no problem running Tradestation on OSX under Parallels/VMWare - lots of people do. Just make sure you have lots of RAM, whatever platform you decide on. None of this is to suggest Linux is in any way "bad" - I'm agnostic on platform issues and believe people should use whatever feels most natural for them.
chime in with the others here - Ubuntu. Depends upon what you trade with - if Java based - will run native. If Windows based - wine may work.
Ninja thank you, this looks promising. Have already downloaded OpenSolaris but it won't connect the network on my test machine (Z61m), have not yet had the time to check out why. But I did see that many T61 / T61p machines were fully functional. I actually did at one stage work with Sun Solaris on a Sun machine so I do like the idea of trying this out. And with Virtual Box also coming from the same stable it may well be a nice solution (trying at this moment to avoid spending sizeable amounts) I'll will try the live CD out on the T61p later today after trading and see what happens then. Random.Capital - I'll keep a MAC solution in mind, certainly VMware Fusion looks a way to the future and it looks even better than using a virtual machine. However at this moment I am investigation for alternatives on my T61p which is only two months old. Maria
The only problem with Solaris is that it is soo darned hard to find native apps. You are much more likely to find native linux apps than Solaris. Yes, I am aware of the "binary compatibility" stuff...still easier running linux