Boarded up?

Does anyone know why this store next to the Avon on Thayer St. is all boarded up? Was there a fire or somethin'?

Laptop recommendations, please?

I'm thinking about buying a second laptop because my G4 Tower is now completely dead.

Obviously I prefer OS X, but I'm thinking some linux-y OS on cheaper hardware might be, well, cheaper.

1.) Does anyone have hardware recs? I can search eBay until doomsday and not find anything concrete if I don't really know what's good. Intel? AMD? Thinkpad? Dell? Etc?? (I realize I'm Apple & Oranging it by mixing chipsets and brand names here, but I really have no clue for what might work best.)

2.) linux-y OS recs? Debian? SuSE? Ubuntu? What's your favorite flavor and why?

3.) eBay? Fer sure? Are there better options for cheap hardware?

My usage requirements are almost all simple and easily fulfilled:

Software:

a.) openSSH.
b.) Web browser. (lynx, plus Firefox or Opera.)
c.) emacs 22.
d.) libxml2 (and libxslt)
e.) The GIMP.
f.) VLC.

Hardware:

a.) A wireless card.
b.) Not too damn heavy.

And finally, not so simple:

c.) It would be nice to use my existing LaCie Firewire external hard drive for backups. However, I realize that maybe older model cheap used AMD and Intel laptops don't generally have Firewire ports. So, meh. I suppose this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker if the price diff. between a laptop that has a Firewire port and one that doesn't is just huge.

Thanks.