Finally, I achieved my major goal of buying a laptop. I acquired an Acer 5738G, since it had reasonably good configuration at affordable price. Also, there were no reports of the model coming apart within a few months, though this might be because it is a relatively new model. Acer has played a dirty trick regarding the installation media but more of that later.
I managed to shrink the original C drive to 160GB and create a new partition for installing some version of GNU Linux. I finally installed Fedora 11, 64 bit version. Funnily, there are no Latex packages available on the installation DVD. Also, some programs crib about the non availability of some gdk header files. I did a lot of searching for the missing latex/tetex/texlive packages on Google, but drew exactly blank. If some kind soul could clarify the mystery of Missing Latex packages, I would be eternally indebted. Perhaps the packagers in their infinite wisdom thought that latex packages are too "geeky", and put in exotic language support as default rather than this...
Update
So, I partitioned the original hard disk to get a 100GB partition. The Vista disk partitioner did a great job of it; creating a new partition while the OS is actually using it. I am not aware of any tool for GNU/Linux which does the same job. Anyways, there is a size restriction on the base partition that it should not be below some X GB; I think X=160/120. Fedora installation was also fine. The major problem is that running Fedora 11 gives just the 50% of the battery life of Vista. Is this a problem with the OS? Seems to be so....
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