Hi, I would like to purchase a new laptop with one of the amd 64 processors. I would like as little config hassles as possible, so i'm looking for
suggestions/advice regarding my best bets when taking the above criteria into consideration. I've heard good things about Avaratec laptops.

If you want things to work "out of the box", with "little config hassles", you are making a mistake buying an amd64 based system. amd64 is a completely different architecture. It would be the equivalent of buying a powerpc based system. If you want something hasslefree, look for a P4 based system with widely supported hardware. Thats what I have, and even then, there is some interaction on my part to get all of the hardware to work. I am in the middle of building an amd64 based system with Gentoo, right after doing a P4 based install, and amd64 is NOT hassle free. That being said, here is a link to some very nice books that you can buy with Linux pre-installed:

http://linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

Good luck.

HP Pavillion ZV6000 Series Running Mandrivia 2006 X86_64 Free Edition. Everything Works Except 3D Acceleration and The Wi-fi. If You Use ndiswrapper and the 64 Bit Windows Driver it works perfectly. Hope This Helps.