Opinions of Sony Vaio VGN-A417S for Debian

[James Brown <jbrown@orange.net>]

All,

I 'm fairly new to Linux (used Sarge for ~6months) and the time has come 
for me to buy a laptop. I will be living in continental Europe 
(Frankfurt, Milan, Paris) for 2 years (on business) so I need a decent 
spec since it will be my only machine at home.

My requirements are:
* Can run Debian
* Pentium M Processor (For battery life/performance)
* Large screen (17")
* Large harddisk (>80Gb)
* Reasonably high performance graphics card

The only laptop that I can find which fits the requirements is the Sony 
Vaio VGN-A417S:
http://www.johnlewis.com/Computing/Computers/Computers/Laptops/230213429/Product.aspx

However, I can't find any evidence that a VGN-A417S is going to be easy 
to install Debian on!

I have seen posts claiming "Sony make the least Linux-friendly" laptops 
and others where people couldn't get the install CD to recognise the 
harddisk in a similar Vaio model.

Can anyone comment on this more specifically please? Or alternatively, 
is there an alternative to the Vaio VGN-A417S which would meet my 
requirements and work with Debian?

As always, any comments are gratefully received.

Thanks in advance,

James.