[ILUG] Seeking feedback on Linux compatibility of Acer 17" laptop

[Anthony]

Hi all,

I'm just about to buy the following laptop as a desktop replacement that
I can use while sitting comfortably in my sitting room:
http://www.laptopsdirect.ie/asp/versions.asp?rewrite=Acer_Aspire_7720-3A2G12Mi_LX.AML0X.213&pagetype=version

I chose a 17" as I'll be using it for some basic photograph editing and
DTP - as well as the usual web, email, word processing, and media
playing. I won't be travelling with it very much so the extra weight of
a 17" isn't a primary consideration.

I'm not mad about the looks but this Acer Aspire seems to be the best
value Core 2 Duo laptop with a 17" screen that I could find which has
Intel based graphics (I won't be playing games requiring fast 3D
graphics and I'd much prefer to use Free/non-proprietary drivers ) as
well as a GNU/Linux compatible wifi card.

The following reports would seem to indicate that I should be reasonably
happy running some variation of GNU/Linux on this machine:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Acer_Aspire_7720G
http://pestilence.insert.gr/installing-archlinux-on-acer-aspire-7720g/
(Both reviews are for a similar model with a NVIDIA GeForce card.)

All the hardware seems to be GNU/Linux friendly with the only grey area
 being the sound card. I thought I'd probe the collective intelligence
of the Irish Linux Users Group to see if anyone has relevant feed-back
or information.

FWIW, I also considered other brands - in particular IBM/Lenovo as
they're usually good computers to run GNU/Linux but their 17" models are
much more expensive and their swapping of the positions of the Left Ctrl
and Fn keys frustrates me.

Thanks in advance,
Anthony