Looking for a notebook

I’ve never particularly liked notebooks. They are clumsy, uncomfortable, hot, slow, weird, and hard to fix or upgrade. And expensive, of course.

But circumstances are changing now in such a way that I’ll need to have a notebook pretty soon. We can’t manage on a single computer nomore, and there is no place to put a second one. Plus I am way too often moving around.

I am not in a hurry yet, but I can’t delay the purchase for another six month. Tha gives me enough to time to study the options and compare the prices.

So far I haven’t done any research what-so-ever. And with this knowledge I am looking for the following:

• IBM ThinkPad T41 notebook (I’ve heard lots of positive comments about this particular line of products, and it supports Linux pretty good too.)
• Fast CPU is not an issue. Even 1 GHz will be enough.
• RAM is good, so I’ll need more. 1 GByte is pretty close to perfect.
• I don’t want an elephant in the bag, but I want something bigger than my mobile, so the ideal size of the screen is 15″.
• Well-supported video card – NVidia MX-series or something similar.
• CD/DVD/DVD-RW is a must.
• USB is a must.
• WiFi card, supported by Fedora Linux 4 or later is a must.
• 10/100 (or maybe even 10/100/1000) Mbit Ethernet adapter is a must.
• Soundcard with line-in (read: Skype) is a must.
• Battery life is not essential – if it can live and work for 2-4 hours, then it’s good enough. Usually, I am pretty close to power lines.

That’s pretty much what I have thought of at this moment. Any suggestions, ideas, or pointers are very welcome.

P.S.: The system will be running Fedora Linux and Fedora Linux only. No dualboots to Windows or anything crazy like that.

P.P.S.: Notebook can even be second-hand, if in good condition.