All the distros are mostly the same thing, only difference would be if you want to get a completely working machine out of the box, but its almost imposible for any distro to achieve that. Anyway thats not always the best route to the cleanest install posible, only the easiest.
If that laptop has an Intel Chipset with AHCI support you can install pretty much anything including the retail install, most things should work except maybe the wireless and the audio of course. If thats too much for you maybe you should try iPC 10.5.6, with the default settings its pretty close to the retail install, but you would have to fix hardware issues afterwards.
If you just want a simple install with everything out of the box (almost imposible I warn you) someone else with a similar machine should have to advice you.