There is only one thing stopping me from using Linux, hassle free hardware support. I want sleep/wake, video card, etc, etc, etc to simply work. And please don't pretend this is true already.
I've found that, with my last two laptops anyhow, most of the hardware problems only came up at install time. After I got the right packages (drivers and stuff), things worked well enough. Getting that set up was tricky, sure, but after it was configured correctly it worked.
So the simplest solution is not to install Linux yourself! You can buy a computer that has Linux on it already. I guess you could also get a friend to install it for you :P. The advantage with getting preinstalled Linux is that not only won't you have to figure everything out yourself, but you also will have hardware chosen explicitly for Linux.
Have you tried Ubuntu Certified hardware and encountered problems? Everything works fine on my Ubuntu Certified hardware: a ThinkPad and an OptiPlex desktop that both have Intel GPUs.
I had an optiplex desktop that did not work well. It was a giant pain in the ass to get video working properly, and it would often not wake from sleep.
OptiPlex covers a large number of models and hardware, just like "ThinkPad" does. I'd imagine that the Ubuntu Certified Hardware list specifies models that are known to work well.
The proliferation of hardware using PVR based video chips has been a pain though.
No denying hardware support is a pain.