I’m going to take a look at it too....in a dual boot situation.
I’ve been doing a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP for several months. Ubuntu 7.10 loads a lot slower than 7.04, but has better hardware integration so I suppose that’s the reason. But I still find myself in XP far more often because of applications I need to run, and don’t want to go the Windows shell thing in Ubuntu.
I hope to upgrade to another laptop sometime in the future. If before 2010 it’ll be XP. If after, I’ll decide whether to go strictly Linux. I have no intention of staying with Windows, even if the PC comes with it installed.