If you want the most hardware-friendly distro, Ubuntu is your best choice. Pretty much your main choices are Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE and Fedora. There are also a range of smaller distributions like Arch and Puppy, etc. Then if you wanted to get your hands dirty with a bit more of a hands-on distro you have choices like Gentoo and Slackware.

Since you're after ease of use, the only one I'd recommend is Ubuntu, 'cos it's a lot more user-friendly than any of the others. It's good to use a bunch of different distributions though; it'll teach you about the underlying structure of Linux a lot more thoroughly than just sticking to one.

As for laptop-friendly distros, Ubuntu is definitely your best bet there, 'cos of the excellent hardware support. I also have a feeling Ubuntu has gotten rid of HAL in favour of udev + DeviceKit, which should lead to better hardware support.