IBM T40 is pretty good, high configuration, light weight. But quite expensive.
If you know someone working in IBM, you can get IBM employee rate using their serial number.
It is much cheaper than regular price.
sony is always cheating consumer, like most of japs company did! and sony may be not too bad at speakers等消费电子, but not good at all at 工业电子, as I said before - I used to have a Compaq Armada, a IBM T22, and a Dell Latitude c640, I changed my laptop every 2 years - but all of them are great - never gvae me any headache! now I'm using a Dell, but frankly I like compaq - 性价比最好! and IBM is most expensive but also it's worth that much - coz of its high quality and brand! Dell is somewhat not too bad, and HP is also great(like IBM's quality but cheaper)- my 鬼子colleagues never trust japs computer like freaking toshiba(in China it's called "掏鸡巴"), and sony, nec whatever...