To an extent Apple can be blamed because they've locked you into using AT&T as your provider if you want to have an iPhone. :)

I didn't notice any autocorrection when I was fiddling with the Touch at the store. How odd of a vocabulary are we talking?

Yeah, Linux netbooks are harder to find. Did Microcenter ever carry the Linux based eee PCs? Anyrate Dell offers an Ubuntu option for their netbook class offering. Asus sadly appears not to be shipping netbooks with linux anymore. Microsoft got to them. But I think the Asus hardware is still compatible with the netbook remix of Ubuntu so if I got one I'd probably try installing that on it.

I know I need to avoid Acer's netbooks as they seem to use hardware that is notoriously unsupported in Linux.