The sony vaio laptop I have had for about 2 years now has not given me any problems at all (knock on wood)
I have not had to pull it apart yet but I like it better than the assorted compaqs and dells that are floating around my work
If you need to connect to routers and such make sure you get one with the serial port - I was surprised to see quite a few laptops without basic serial ports when I bought this one
Hope this helps some
/JD