Is this a good computer: Sony VAIO FZ4000 (customized)?

I'm looking to buy a new computer. I'm curious what people think about sony Vaio as opposed to some comperable deals I saw with Dell and IBM. Dell historically has been great, but I hear that the newer Vaio's are better than the newer Dell's. Is that true?

Here's the specifics on the PC I'm looking at:
Sony VAIO FZ4000
Extended Battery (BPL8)
WLAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth庐 technology
NVIDIA庐 GeForce庐 8400M GT
LCD 15.4" WXGA (XBRITE-ECO鈩? with integrated video camera
Blu-ray Disc鈩?Read and Write Drive
160GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
3 GB DDR-SDRAM (DDR-667, 2GBx1 + 1GBx1)
Microsoft庐 Windows Vista庐 Business with Service Pack 1
Intel庐 Core 2鈩?Duo Processor T8100 (2.1GHz)

It comes with Norton 360鈩?All-In-One Security (60 Day Trial) and Microsoft Works. I'm still deciding whether to use Norton 360 or get AGN or AVAST antivirus for free instead. I was thinking of using my old version of Office when I really need it, but relying mostly on OpenOffice, which I started using a few months ago.

With student discounts, the computer is about $1500. I was thinking of getting Adobe Acrobat Standard ($100 with student discount) too. If I get Office, that'll be another $170 with the student discount.

here's my take on it.
I've owned a vaio laptop since 2005. This is my third (the other two I passed them down to my family). And this one happens to be a FZ4000. for $50 I went with the 2.4Ghz (paying another $150 for just 2.5Ghz wasn't appealing to me), and has the hybrid 160GB HD (was a free uprgrade a month ago).
I didn't like it came with Vista (my first). It's giving me hardtimes. Don't know whether it's the OS or what. It's slowing and sometimes freezing my internet browsing.
Other than that, nothing bad to report (except for those pre-installed programs that pop-up every time i turn it on to register or update and takes forever).
But I mainly use it for web browsing.
The main reason I got it is because I wanted a white keyboard, and simple keyboard (not interested in all those instant launch buttons gimmicks HP for example comes with).
But my family is "happy" to report that the batteries on the ones I gave them are getting hot (and they're not on the list of battery recalls).

it's decent, but you can get the same deal on newegg for a few hundred less and w/ a better graphics card. here's a really good deal... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...

this is more than o.k. but it depends on what you you want it for and how much you pay for it

Id recommend it

great

Sounds pretty good man, but how much is that. I know SONY can be expensive just because they sell the brand. My personal choice would be Dell cause ive never had any problems with all of my dell pc's and there customer service is good. Look at the XPS line of labtops and you will be impressed:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/pro...

If you need a blu ray player you can order it with one.
P.S. If you need this pc for work then you can order without all that junk that typically comes with a new computer.