by Well my old laptop finally bit the dust a few weeks ago so my company got me a nice, new shiny Thinkpad T420. This is wonderful except that newest linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu 11.04) is lacking a bit on the hardware support. A few days ago I finally had almost everything working. Multi-monitor support, Nvidia graphics, etc. and all my applications worked fine except for the wireless card (a Realtec RTL8188CE) which kept cutting in and out.
Searching on the net I found that this was a pretty common problem. The fix is to move to the linux 3.0.1 kernel. Thanks to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds this was a painless process until I restarted with the new kernel. Ugh the nvidia drivers I was using for X broke and I only got 800×600 resolution. I first tried to rebuild the xorg.conf file and that just locked everything up. Well in with the Ubuntu Live CD, mount the disk, and put back the xorg.conf file that works in low resolution and on to plan B.
This laptop comes with both Intel integrated and Nvidia graphics. I was using the nvidia graphics because the driver for the Intel graphics did not support multi-monitors. Perhaps this has been fixed in the 3.0.1 kernel. I changed the firmware to use the Intel graphics and YEAH it worked.
Cool, now to check the applications and be sure they all work. Whoops, vmware workstation modules will not build in the new kernel. More searching on the internet finall found http://osicarg.wordpress.com/2011/0tt7/15/here-is-patch-for-vmware-player-3-1-4-build-385536-on-linux-2-6-39-2-amd64-kernel/ which patches the vmware modules so they will compile correctly.
This setup actually works better for me because I do not need the power of the Nvidia graphics and the Intel graphics use a lot less power so I get a longer battery life