Well, apparently the newest Sonys are better than ones they’ve made in the past, due to less outsourcing of manufacturing on Sony’s part (this is from a Best Buy computer tech, so take it with a grain of salt). For me personally, I’ll probably never buy a Sony laptop again due to the problems I had with the last one – the Windows installation was never fully stable, there were hard drive issues, there were video/motherboard issues, and calling their customer support line was a direct line to darkest New Delhi to people who could only read off the script in front of them.
Mind you, from a customer service standpoint, that’s probably about as good as it’s going to get in today’s market. Bleah.
As for what I do recommend: first off, I’m going to assume you’re looking for a Windows laptop. If you’re looking for Apple or *nix, I’m not the person to talk to. That having been said, the first thing I recommend is getting a Best Buy or Circuit City credit card, if your credit is good enough to handle it. That will get you eighteen-months-same-as-cash deals, and that makes the laptop suddenly a lot more affordable. The other thing to remember is that you’ll probably be paying up to $300 more than the list price for the laptop if you get it from these places, then get the difference back in a month or two in rebates (or “rebate cards”, as Best Buy is now doing).
As for size, remember that laptop size and price are inversely proportional: the smaller you go, the higher the price goes (exponentially, it seems, sometimes). The Compaq I went with is what is called a “desktop replacement” and yeah, it’s big for a laptop, but it’s still only about 7-8 pounds. Put that into a laptop case and sling it over your shoulder and it’s no big deal. When you start trying to whittle that down to less than five pounds, suddenly you’re up in the $2000 – $3000 range.
So now that we have all that down, which laptop to buy? Well, I bought a Compaq mainly based on price, and the knowledge that if anything goes wrong from a software standpoint either I or someone I know can deal with it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, according to this article which it appears just came out, it would appear that the overall rating for Compaq is pretty crappy, only better on the reliability list than…Sony. Wow, what a surprise. I guess I’m trading up a little, anyway 🙂
Take a look at the chart in that article and that can probably give you better guidance on which brand to go with – you’ll have to balance reliability with price, as there seems to be a direct relation between the two. I’m guessing you’ll probably wind up somewhere in the middle of that list, which doesn’t look too bad.
Hope this helps a little – let me know if there’s any other info I can provide!

Oh yeah – it was amusing to walk by the Delta gates and baggage claims and seeing the mess they were in. Between that and the winter storm that skirted us in NC, I really got away lucky this time!