New laptop for work. Need suggestions.

[ScottyB]

so Jen has some grant money to buy a laptop with for work and home use. word processing/MS office stuff at work, internet surfing and multimedia stuff at home. For our price range of &700, the priority order is reliability, speed, and memory in a 15 inch size. it would be nice to have a good couple USB ports since it will do part time as a desktop when she brings it home. battery life and weight are not a big deal.

i really like the Acer Aspire AS5745-7247. initially when i saw it was sold through Staples i had second thoughts but it looks really solid with some great components and plenty of drive space. good reviews.

i'm also looking hard at the Vaio VPCEB33FM. what do you guys think of Sonys? it's comparable to the Acer in components but with a bit more multimedia stuff and a great wifi suite. similar price. i think we'd probably get alot of value out of the sony.

these are sort of the "easy button" products for me, i can just go down to the bigbox store and take it home.

we're also considering the Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820TG-7805 which is a bit more money but lighter, with more speed and a better battery. just not sure we'd really need that much more performance. i'm not really interested in HP's or Dells.

[Apoc]

Sonys are overpriced, me thinks.

IBM Thinkpad? They aren't pretty, but they're solid machines.

[ScottyB]

Sonys are overpriced, me thinks.

IBM Thinkpad? They aren't pretty, but they're solid machines.

we actually have a thinkpad T42 now. we bought it used from IBM and aside from being old and slow, it's very solid. unfortunately it's just not cutting it anymore and the new thinkpads are pretty $$ from what i've been seeing.