Modern Laptops and Ubuntu....

Ubuntu 10.04 is great.... except when used with the current crop of HP Compaq and Lenovo laptops. It seems that they use a strange ATI/Intel audio chipset that does not stick with normal protocols. the current Alpha 3 of Ubuntu 10.10 DOES work with these chipsets, so it's just over the horizon for compatibility. But until then you need to manually upgrade ALSA in your Ubuntu install.. 10.04 will probably NOT get the update officially for a while, and 10.10 will be the earliest you will be able to get it.

there are other problems with 10.10.. like ATI video drivers not working. and update completely broken.