late text messages with AT&T

Sometimes text messages don't arrive for days... and one day they all arrive together. Today I received 4 late messages, 1 from Thursday, 2 from Friday, 1 from Saturday. I've missed a bunch more messages from another friend who also has AT&T. Has anyone had similar issues? Does complaining help?

I used to have a bit of this with bell.ca, but it was only a handful of cases in 2 years, to my knowledge.

buying another laptop

It's time for me to buy a new laptop, and the university will put $1300 towards it. Since I'm a Linux user, I'd like to avoid the Microsoft tax. How can I do that?

I think I'm done with tablet PCs, at least until the driver problems are solved. In particular, when my laptop is closed, I get crazy clicks (regardless of OS), which occasionally cause very annoying damage to my taskbars and such. So the current computer might become a tablet and nothing else.