I run 12.04 on a desktop utilizing 2 OCZ SSDs and 4 monitors on two nVidia GeForce GTX460 cards in SLI mode over DVI-D. There’s no problem with anything. I play Minecraft on it and use it for email, web browsing, and banking.
Laptop hardware should work just the same. There are manufacturer/OEM drivers available for a majority of the laptop mfgs out there.
Put Ubuntu on a USB drive and do a Live boot from it on your machine just to see how it runs. You don’t have to commit to reformatting or buying an expensive SSD for it if you don’t want to.
See this is what gets me “There are manufacturer/OEM drivers available for a ***majority*** of the laptop mfgs out there”
You know everytime I try to run Linux on desktop I must have all the minority machines because there are ALWAYS missing drivers or I have to compile them myself. For example, card readers that are built into the laptop. Or the function key on the keyboard doesn’t work.
For servers Linux is fine and even preferred in many instances. But not for the desktop.