Buying a new VAIO Laptop, advice?

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Holy Crap!

At 0:20 it's Nathan!

[Niode]

Also, would it be a good thing to mention that I am somewhat of a Sony Brand whore? All of my Home theater/Camera/Consoles/Computer External drives are Sony, So I think that would get rid of the compatibility issues

Why?

Everything Sony I've ever had has broken down on me. I don't care to list here but you can do a search for Niode + Sony + Piece of shit and it will bring up a looooooong list of all the Sony stuff I've ever had that has broken. The only things that I have by Sony that haven't broken yet is my two PS3s, they're probably going to break at some point though

Regarding compatibility, I don't see how having everything the same brand will make it more compatible with each other... After all Sony doesn't make a lot of the components themselves, they just put them in a shiny, overpriced shell.

All the people that had Sony laptops at Uni hated them and regretted buying them, most of them just had weird compatibility problems with software the others just broke down. They all just wish they had bought a MBP. Although the Uni I went to is all Mac. So the inter-compatibility is a lot better with mac to mac rather than tainting things with Windows and it's strange idiosyncrasies.

Regarding the MBP problems, I have had a few but I have an apple store pretty close to where I live, In fact I have two within a 25 mile radius of my house. I have had the Logic board replaced on my MBP (for free under warranty) and the DVD-RW drive since it stopped recording discs properly (again for free under warranty) all these took less than 2 days waiting, the optical drive was replaced the same day whilst I went shopping. I don't think any other company can offer that kind of turn around on repairs, most require you wait at least a week. Almost no company can offer in store repairs.

So yes you probably will get problems with you laptop, but you will get problems with any laptop, it's a given that you get an extended warranty on a laptop, you'd be an idiot not to. The difference here is Apple offer the best warranty I've ever seen on a laptop. All the others require you to ship the laptop off somewhere whenever you have a problem, you can't beat just being able to drop it off at a genius bar and get it back a couple of days later.

Don't forget that if you don't like the mac operating system you can always bastardise a MBP by having Windows as your default operating system.

Also don't forget, I assume you're young since you're still living with parents and that you are either still at school or at college or something. If that is the case check to see if your school offers a student discount. For further education it's somewhere in the region of 11-12%. For higher education (IE University etc) it's 15-20%, which is HUGE. Most laptop manufacturers don't have student discount. It's worth checking into. I know that Apple does, and it just makes their laptops seem like there's no point in buying anything else. I know I couldn't find a laptop with the same features as the MBP when I was looking for my laptop for Uni.

Also, another thing to consider, apple laptops don't lose their value as much as windows laptops. You can buy a sony viao and it will have lost half it's value a year later. I paid £1250 for my MBP and I can get £800-900 for mine on ebay 3 years later...

[Limewater]

I have no direct experience to back this up, but I've heard that Lenovo's quality has taken a little bit of a hit with the latest Thinkpad series (I think it's the T400 or something).

I have a Dell Latitude E6400. It looks a lot different from the older Dell Business-class laptops. I like the aesthetic. From my reading, it also appears to have slightly better build quality-- or at least it did nine months ago. I got a good deal on mine buying it through the Dell Outlet as a refurb-- it still comes with a three-year warranty just like a new machine.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I have no direct experience to back this up, but I've heard that Lenovo's quality has taken a little bit of a hit with the latest Thinkpad series (I think it's the T400 or something).

I have a Dell Latitude E6400. It looks a lot different from the older Dell Business-class laptops. I like the aesthetic. From my reading, it also appears to have slightly better build quality-- or at least it did nine months ago. I got a good deal on mine buying it through the Dell Outlet as a refurb-- it still comes with a three-year warranty just like a new machine.

They feel slightly cheaper but durability wise they seem the same to me. Plus I'd rather have it feel a little more cheap and not cost $2500 for the base model T series.

[Jrecee]

Sony electronics = overpriced.