Seeking advice before buying a new laptop

[inp3dance]

Hi everyone,

I need to buy a new laptop for myself, which will run Linux, of course, but I have some things I'd like to ask you:

1. Which GPU? And I really wont to start a binary vs free drivers debate here. The thing is that in my current laptop I have an NVidia board, which I use with binary driver and it works.
But there are really good laptop offers which have ATI boards in it, but I heard that ATI/AMD drivers are not so good nowadays, although no experience. I mostly use KDE, sometimes GNOME, and I like desktop effects, I do very little gaming.
What are your experiences with ATI/AMD or Intel GPUs? (powersaving tips counts too)

2. I never used more than one monitor with Linux, but this time I will buy one for home too (I have multimonitor setup at work, but that station runs Windows). My question here how linux handles multimonitor setup? Does the GPU driver counts here? If my monitor will have a FullHD (1920x1080) resolution, but the laptop a smaller one, will I be able to use both?
I want to use my big monitor as primary and the laptop as secondary screen, not mirroring.

3. I'd like also to connect with my TV to watch movies. Is anything to take into consideration here? Planning to connect with HDMI.

Thanks in advance!

[DrHu]

Nvidia has mostly been considered the better success story for Linux support, AMD/ATI is a bit slower to offer driver support..
--nvidia still has legacy support (drivers) available for older chipsets, but like any manufacturer, they have a problem with making continuous support available for all chipsets (from earliest to latest)

• The latest GPU (graphics processing Unit) are often not current supported in Linux or at least delayed until sometime after a Microsoft driver/vendor release
  --nvidia has been the better of the two graphic card companies to offer such support

Linux can do multi monitor support with either nvidia or ATI, however you should before considering the notebooks functionality under Linux at least look up (search the Internet) for any issues, ref: drivers etc..

hdmi output (to TV..)
http://maketecheasier.com/setup-hdmi-di ... 2011/01/05
--you should also check out hdmi issues if any for your card (usually an integrated intel processor (graphics..), on netbooks or notebooks..