How do Dell-Notebooks work with FreeBSD (video/audio/wlan)?

[Paul Kaletta]

Hi,

I think that I'll buy a Laptop soon. I haven't made up my mind yet, but
I think that I might buy a Dell, since they're so cheap and I haven't
heard many bad things. Those Notebooks come with Windows preinstalled,
but I'd like to run FreeBSD if it's possible.

Has anyone any experience with them?
Is all of the build-in hardware supported? What about accelerated video?

There is some choice about different displays, and some of them have
very very high resolutions like 1600x1200 on a 15"-screen. Is such a
display usable under X?

And another very important question:

I wanted to play around with audio-software, so how good is the build-in
audio-card?

Especially I would like to know whether Dell-Notebooks have
an line-in, since I'm not certain from the descriptions on the web-site.

Also: is the audio-output very noisy or can I use the line in for any
recordings? (I don't need very high quality, but I'd like to record
myself playing guitar and use that as background-music for
improvisations).

If it's not feasible to use the build-in hardware, can I use external
audio-hardware with FreeBSD? Like pc-card or USB soundcards?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the wlan hardware kinda works,
even if I have to use ndisulator, right? Is there any hope that I don't
have use it one day?

Sorry that I asked so many questions in one mail, but they really only
concern Dell-Notebooks, so someone who has a recent model could probably
give me some hints.

Thanks

Paul