I've found I don't need top flight hardware, just well designed hardware that has driver support. I'm using an old Thinkpad X41 with ubuntu 10.04 netbook edition. The drivers have been working flawlessly. I get the best suspend/resume battery time I've ever had on a laptop. I'm sure the latest macbook air tops it, but I get a good five days of letting my laptop sit in my travel case unused and I open the lid and resume it goes.
