| Sony Vaio's did have an awful reputation for customer service, - they had (not 100% sure if that has changed) no UK service centres, - everything went back to some black hole somewhere.
I would not look at a laptop unless it had an onsite warranty for 3 years, - forget RTB, - as they can be away for months, - Acer have that reputation.
Only look at Duo Core, - see you are looking at Centrino, to be truthful you do not have to have Centrino, - it is an Intel marketing word to prove that you have an Intel procesor and an Intel wireless card, - I would go with the Intel processor but you might save by going for a 3rd party wireless card, although a lot of manufacturers list them at a higher price to please Intel, - they cost is lower, - so if you can get to speak to somebody you could do a better deal.
Duo Core (Duo on laptops Dual on desktops) is a lot better than the Pentium M or 4, - at least 30% performance increase. As an aside Pentium 4 is about to replace the old Celeron family for desktops Pentium D is about to go end of life )lasted about 6 months a be replaced with something even better. Intel are at last about to announce quite a step forward in processor technology.
DDR2 is al ot better as are SATA hard drives.
Deals are hard to find right now, - few of the big boys have seriously over estimated the market in their forecasts, - and the company that normally drives down prices is in serious do-do (share price halved in July) so on margin recovery right now, hence no super deals on their website at the moment.
Hope that waffle in some way helps.  |