Thanks for the recommendation. I'm taking a look at them now. What distribution of linux were you running? Did you have any problems with installing / hardware compatibility?
I was using stock Ubuntu...I think it was around V10 back then? I also ran BackTrack on it for my security class. It was dual booted to win 7. The nVidia graphics drivers were proprietary and had to be installed separately, but otherwise everything seemed to work fine.
Here are my two cents : I have a Sager that runs Linux Mint XFCE and there were absolutely no problem. I have also installed Gentoo with no issue. It's my favorite laptop that I've owned.