Quick overall verdict on this computer: the company seems decent (I received my order on time, and they sent me a new hard drive with no hassle after the original died), the hardware is good (except for the unlucky hard drive), and things work pretty well with Linux.
Velocity Micro NoteMagix B50 Ultra
$1750 - 3% student discount + free shipping, in April 2005.
The computer came with Windows XP Home (Velocity Micro won't ship without an OS on the machine). I asked them to put it only in a 5 GB partition, but of course they didn't. I tried to resize their ntfs partition using qtparted from the Knoppix 3.6 CD , but it couldn't move some files that Windows had inconveniently put in the middle of the drive. I tried to get a newer version of ntfsresize that might be able to move the files, but I couldn't find one. So instead, I used a bad-guy tool: PartitionMagic. It worked smoothly, leaving me with 5 GB of ntfs and 55 GB of empty space.
On my second hard disk, VM just send me a blank one and I had Windoze put itself on a 5 GB vfat partition. Much easier.
Then I installed Gentoo from the 2005.0 (later 2005.1) LiveCD, following their excellent documentation.
No major events in this process. Here is my kernel .config (kernel 2.6.14-gentoo-r5).
touchpad: The VM website says this computer has an "integrated touchpad mouse with scroll keys," but there are only two buttons and so no scroll keys. But it's a Synaptics touchpad, so you can configure scrolling and other stuff. See this page and my xorg.conf.
sound: It's an Intel 82801DB AC'97 Audio Controller. There are detailed Gentoo instructions for alsa, and things work fine with intel8x0.
graphics: The card is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 M10. It took a few tries, but I got it working with the fglrx driver by following the instructions here. Here is the xorg.conf. But, I couldn't get an external display/projector/beamer to work with this driver. So instead, I have a different xorg.conf which uses the radeon driver. This doesn't enable glx, drm, or dri, but your might be able to get all that working with the instructions here. For me, it's enough that it supports simultaneous 1400x1050 on the lcd and 1024x768 on the projector.
ethernet: It's a Realtek RTL-8139 and uses the module 8139too.
wireless: It's an Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG and uses the module ipw2200.
modem: It's an Intel 82801DB modem, and it works with slmodem.
function keys: The brightness keys worked fine, but the volume ones didn't, so I mapped them with hotkeys:
Any suggestions would be most welcome...
wireless: Yes, I said above that it works, and it does. But, I can only get it to work when I boot first to Windows and then reboot to Linux. If I go from off straight to Linux, the orange light doesn't come on, and the hardware address shows up as 00:00:00:00:00:00. My guess is that it's some firmware thing, but I don't know how to fix it.
power management: I followed along with the Gentoo Power Management Guide and got through cpu frequency scaling, lcd power management, and disk power management. I couldn't get suspend working, though: it will go to sleep but then reboot when I try to wake it up.
I'd be glad to hear if you've tried out any of these.