Originally Posted by ssgramma
I love my Sony Vaio.
I bought a Vaio yesterday :-) I have had many laptops over the years, both for work and personal use and, so far, the Vaio is my favorite by a long way. It was also a PCMAG.COM Editor's Choice, something DH liked because he said that meant it had no real issues. Many of the models I looked at had pretty poor user reviews.
Try to avoid any laptop with a Pentium processor if you do actually want to use it on your lap - they tend to run very hot and it can be tough to keep the electronics cool enough in that situation.
My local Office Max had some good clearance deals on HP laptops, but they didn't have the separate number pad on the side that I wanted.