Many (most?) laptop vendors do this including Lenovo, HP, and Dell just as ones that turned up mentions with a quick search. I've been told that it's done because at least in theory they whitelist the cards that they've done emissions certification testing with and that they can't sell equipment that they haven't done that testing on - it may not be true, but it seems a pretty niche thing to try to do hardware lock-in on.
One important factor in this is how large is the whitelist? If the manufacturer offers that model with 3-4 different cards as options, you know they'll all be supported. On the other hand for cheaper laptops (like a ThinkPad Edge I once had to deal with) that are non-customizable the whitelist may only have the one card model it was released with.
For Lenovo models at least you can dig through their technical documentation and get a listing of part numbers that should be compatible.
One important factor in this is how large is the whitelist? If the manufacturer offers that model with 3-4 different cards as options, you know they'll all be supported. On the other hand for cheaper laptops (like a ThinkPad Edge I once had to deal with) that are non-customizable the whitelist may only have the one card model it was released with.
For Lenovo models at least you can dig through their technical documentation and get a listing of part numbers that should be compatible.