| hmmm the sony's are nice laptops, but I had a VAIO PCG-F430 (P3 450, 14.1TFT) once a year or two ago, and their warranty, and support are terrible. I had a broken port on mine, and after a week of trying to get in touch with sony i just returned the thing. My dad had a NEC Versa SX, a couple years back. And the warranty was wonderful (3yrs standard), when his mainboard failed one day (charger didn't work) he talked to the LOCAL NEC service center, and they had him a new mainboard fedexed in and installed by the next morning. He got his laptop from a Insurance claim sales place (found items after new one's are bought), and didn't have a receipt so the looked up the serial # in their database. But NECs are really expensive and hard to find.
Thinkpads and Toshiba's are always safe choices, their support doesn't match NECs but the last time i checked an NEC costs about 500-1000 more than the competition.
As far as hardware goes the sony's are really nice, but if something breaks it'll be a bitch to get it fixed. | 
