I have used FreeBSD on 3 laptops:
Dell C600
cpu: Intel Pentium III 850MHz
ram: 256MB
hdd: 30GB
gfx: ATI Mobility 8MB
nic: 3COM 10/100
scr: 14.1" XGA (1024x768)
snd: Sigmatel
comment C600: everything works with FreeBSD, cpu scales well with
powerd/cpufreq you can hotplug batteries/cdrom without any problem at runtime, I only did not checked PCIMCIA slot, but I have read on other FreeBSD laptop reviews that it works.
Dell D600
cpu: Intel Pentium M 1.5GHz
ram: 512MB
hdd: 30GB
gfx: ATI Radeon 9000 32MB
nic: Broadcom 10/100/1000
scr: 14.1" XGA (1024x768)
snd: Sigmatel
wir: Intel 3945 WIFI
comment D600: everything works with FreeBSD, cpu scales well with
powerd/cpufreq you can hotplug batteries/cdrom without any problem at runtime.
Dell D630
cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz
ram: 2GB
hdd: 80GB
gfx: Intel X3100
nic: Broadcom 10/100/1000
scr: 14.1" WXGA+ (1440x900)
snd: Sigmatel
wir: Intel 3945 WIFI
comment D630: I was pretty surprised that everything works with FreeBSD here, cpu scales well with
powerd/cpufreq with frequencies from 300MHz to 2000MHz with steps (300/400/500/...) (from 150MHz in FreeBSD 7.1) even Ubuntu can scale it down only to 800MHz you can hotplug batteries/cdrom without any problem at runtime. Intel X3100 graphics works out of the box with intel driver from ports, I got about 950-1050fps at
glxgears, if you want to run Ubuntu on it, even hibernation/suspend works.
You can also specify
debug.cpufreq.lowest=800 in
/boot/loader.conf and it will scale from 800MHz to 2000MHz only.
Yeah, all by Dell, but not because of the brand, but because of the keyboard layout like that:
Dell Latitude keyboard layout
I also considered IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T61/R61 instead of Dell D630, pretty same features/components generally, but I was able to get D630 for $750 while I would have to pay about $1100 for the Thinkpad so ...
Also ModularBay/Ultrabay battery for D630 is bigger then for T61/R61 (4300mHa Dell / 2700mHa IBM) and its two times cheaper ...
The other difference is that 9-CELL battery goes out of the laptop at the back side in T61/R61:
Thinkpad T61 9-cell battery
But in Dell it serves as a hand pad at the front of the laptop:
Dell D630 9-cell battery
But I had also heard that IBM got better TouchPad, but I did not had a chance to try it.