> I am considering an IBM Thinkpad, the R51 or R50e in particular. Does
> anyone have any experiences with it, or perhaps can recommend another
> similarly priced and featured laptop?

keep with ibm hardware. whatever.

the hibernation on those laptops is hardware-based and while the os
just thinks it went into sleep, the bios takes control and writes
memory to the disk. it's os independant and any os that allows sleep
will allow hibernation.

the sound control is also hardware based so you will control it using
the sound buttons and it will just work.

the netbsd support will vary from laptop brand to brand so perhaps you
should ask for people's dmesg of various models you would be
interested. i got a x30 model and everything works except the win
modem. i got some code to handle the smbus but it seems there's
nothing on it and the infrared might work but the atmel chips on
previous thinkpad models is defective and kills the bios when you scan
the infrared bus (using read 0 with the defective atmel chips
overwrites its pram area and on next boot the bios reports a hardware
fault and gets stuck there).

the main advantage of ibm is you can order any part from their web
site, and they offer the transport costs. and i really mean any part.
i replaced the french keyboard with an english one (a UK one as the US
one annoys me with some of its key positions), i broke the keyboard
bezel when i dropped a beretta over it by mistake and it has a new
one. you can order ram or any plastic part from them : i like that.

i'll send you a netbsd 2.0F dmesg if you want :)

-- 
Gilbert Fernandes