If you're looking for something cheap, that's hard. Guaranteed freedom has a
cost. :) The best you can do if you need something cheaper than what Think
Penguin offers is to either test or search for on h-node[0] cheap laptops you
find at a store. The common problems are:
- Lack of 3-D acceleration. To avoid this, get something with an Intel CPU;
Intel integrated graphics have officially supported free drivers and
firmware.
- Lack of wireless. This one is really hard to avoid, but your best bet is a
wireless card from Atheros, and I think you also want to avoid the
WiFi/Bluetooth combos. Alternatively, if you can't find a laptop with a
working wireless card, you can get a USB adapter from Think Penguin.
Also note that some of them use some weird thing that prevents using certain
Fn keys, like enabling and disabling the touchpad, from working without some
sort of proprietary software that runs on Windows (I've experienced this with
a couple of Toshiba laptops), so check for that.
[0] http://h-node.org
