I hate shopping for laptops

Well, my laptop (which is Keersten's old laptop) is on its way out. Due to hardware problems, it will periodically freeze up or spontaneously reboot. We've had it for about 6 years and it's been pretty good for us (other than I never like how big it was.)
For the last few weeks, I've been using Keersten's MacBook so I could actually get some work done when I wasn't in the office. It has been a little frustrating for her to not have it available to her 24/7.
Anyway, for the last week, I've been shopping around to find a good laptop deal. I hate shopping to begin with and really hate the process I go through when looking to make a semi-major purchase. I'll start with a low priced model (~$600) and as I'm configuring it justify those $60 options and before you know it I'm looking at a $1800 laptop. I'll get settled on one manufacturer and end up switching to another. I'm a little tired of hopping around from Lenovo to Dell to Mac to HP to ....
I just want something small that I can run Linux on and isn't too expensive. Is that too much to ask? Ok, I'm done complaining now. I'll definitely post here when I finally decide which one to get.