It's not that you won't find some models that don't have these restrictions
from the manufacturers above. The problem is more and more companies are
implementing them. If you continue purchase from companies that take away
your freedom don't be surprised when there is nobody left to get a laptop
from without such restrictions.
Dell's Alienware line up may not have them yet... we know for a fact they are
are starting to implement restrictions on the most recent models though. It
very likely won't be long before all Dells have such restrictions.
Acer, Asus, and others at the moment have not implemented such restrictions.
As far as Nvidia goes the same is true. Nvidia has not shown a willingness to
cooperate on a free driver. They are not releasing specifications and have
explicitly stated they are not supporting the free software project which was
started.
The reverse engineered driver is of limited usefulness. Even where companies
are releasing some specifications full support for graphics chipsets have
taken years. These chipsets still aren't free though. They are dependant on
non-free components.
Intel is the only company which is currently cooperating in producing a free
driver that isn't dependent on a non-free component.
There is another company which might be producing a 3d accelerated desktop
graphics chipset with free drivers available. They have GPL licensed code
although I'm not sure at the moment if it is similar to AMD's efforts in that
you are still dependent on a non-free core or not.
