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The Tablet PC is a waste of money unless you are into graphic designing and want to actually draw on it and import the graphics. The ones I'm most familiar with are made by Motion Computing. If you don't purchase a keyboard for it, you have to use the stylus to type or write like you do on a PDA to "type". With the Motion Computing one, EVERYTHING is a plug in accessory. CD drive, Floppy drive, etc. There isn't anything built in except the ports for things to plug into. So, you get this really cool tiny tablet thing and you have to have at least 3 accessories to really use it (mouse, keyboard and CD/DVD Rom). The keyboards for them also act as a stand and as a cover for the Tablet. They feel really flimsy and typing on them, I worry I'm typing too hard.
I hear people rave about Vaios and I don't get it. Granted, mine was one of the earlier models, but it overheated a lot. I also had several keys just stop working.. the 6, the - and the delete key. It made things interesting, especially since my phone number has several 6's in it and my username on Yahoo has an _ in it (the shift of -). When I called Tech Support, they insisted it was an Operating System problem and had me re-install the OS over and over. It needed a new keyboard is what it needed. I do this for a living and KNEW what the problem was. They wouldn't fix it. I wouldn't touch another one.
The laptop I would like to have is the Dell Latitude D410. It's lightweight, very portable and comes with a docking station that has all your extras (CD/DVD and additional ports). Even WITH the docking station, it's slimmer than most others. One of our PhDs just got one and I was really drooling over it. It's much easier to get parts for Dells if you want to fix them yourself. They are pretty easy to disassemble too and have all their service manuals online, with step by step directions for replacing/upgrading parts. Their tech support is top notch and I would ALWAYS get the 3 year next day service level of support.
I've also had Canons, IBM Think Pads, and an Acer and I've worked with Toshibas. If I was going to get anything other than Dell, it would be Toshiba. We've never had an issue with any of our Toshiba laptops.
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