The latest review I've read on the KDE desktop is from Ars Technica, A first look at KDE 4.0 release candidate 2. While the author notes that a lot of improvements still need to be made to KDE 4.0, overall it should be an impressive desktop. I'm contemplating that my next laptop will be fully Linux and hoping KDE 4.0 will bring enough Wow to impress others on why I didn't choose to go the Windows or Mac route.
Last summer, I reluctantly chose Windows Vista for my home desktop computer. I mainly bought the system knowing I needed an edge for when we finally introduced the new Microsoft operating system at work (so far we continue to downgrade our boxes at work from Vista to XP). Needless to say, I'm not too impressed with Vista.
There are some that argue that Vista was released too soon, but I'll argue that after five years of development, it was released to late. I can't help but wonder if post versions of Windows XP had been released in a 1 to 2 year cycle how much better developers would have a handle on the bugs and users would have understood the new features.
This past fall, we bought my wife a MacBook Pro. I am impressed with the laptops hardware and I'm comfortable with the Mac OS X's Unix based operating system. However, something that gnaws at me is that the look and feel of the Mac really doesn't seem too different than that of a good Linux desktop (I'm including both Gnome and KDE). I know there are people who love their Mac, but for me I've never really felt the Mac gave me love back.
Thus, I am leaning toward a cheap Linux laptop. I'm tired of waiting on Vista and I'm unimpressed with the Mac. It seems to me that Linux is the logical choice to go for the laptop.