choosing a new laptop for Ubuntu installation

My laptop that ran Ubuntu 12.04 died a couple of days ago. I'm traveling a lot lately and want to get a new one within a day or two. I also want service protection, so I plan to buy directly from a store.

This limits my choices, but based on various factors I've tentatively decided to buy either an Asus Q400A-BHI7N03 (http://www.laptopsmile.com/2012/10/a...p-14-inch.html) or a Samsung NP520U4C-A01UB (http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/l...NP520U4C-A01UB).

I'd like to hear from others about their experience running Ubuntu on one of these laptops, particularly what problems they encountered and whether they could find easy fixes.

I'd also like to hear about running Windows 8 in VMWare player. Does it run smoothly? Any glitches?

Thank you for your responses.

To check if all of the hardware works properly just take a Live CD/USB to the store and boot Ubuntu. This will let you know what works and what you might have issues with.

I went ahead and bought the Samsung, so no need to reply.

How's that laptop working for you? I'm looking in to purchasing something this weekend and am wondering how that worked out for you?

I've had trouble with the wireless. It drops the connection randomly. It could be after 2 minutes or it could be after 2 hours. Once it loses wireless, I have to reboot to get it back.

It's not an Ubuntu problem. It does the same thing in my Windows 8 partition.

It's very frustrating. I would send it back for a new one but I don't think it would do any good. See http://communities.intel.com/thread/31090. When I talked to Samsung on the phone, they wouldn't acknowledge the problem exists.

I've seen some suggestions in the Ubuntu forum, but I haven't gotten anything to work in Windows or Ubuntu. So I wouldn't recommend this laptop or any with the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Wifi adapter. I'm hoping that an updated driver will fix it someday.

I can vouch for some intel wireless cards kind of sucking.

Atheros or Realtek drivers that make them work are better than the intel drivers in Windows 9if you can make them work). I have an Asus gaming rig that is beast in windows or ubuntu but the wreless does decide not to be friendly all the time.

Recent updates in ubuntu have much improved performance however, in windows it is much imroved too when I got the manufacturer drivers and switched between them until one finally hasn't really failed yet.