IMHO as a 17 year IT professional -
HP, Sony, and Compaq laptops are not good. The units are generally underpowered, heavy, and unreliable in my experience in a corporate environment and for consumers. Re - I've fixed more of these brands for friends than any other.
I'd go with the Hasse or a spankin new Lenovo (which are IBM Thinkpads) if you want to "buy Chinese". Otherwise Toshiba, IBM, and Acer are currently putting out great units.
Secondly - DO NOT BUY VISTA. The reasons are too many to list, not to mention it's hella slow. Go with XP SP2 if you are Windows person. For the more adventurous the new Dell Ubuntu Linux powered laptops are great, I would get one but I'm in love with my Toshiba still after 2 years. I currently dual-boot XP and Ubuntu Linux.
I second the jump to OpenOffice, I find myself more productive (I'm an aspiring sci-fi/fantasy/wuxia writer) using it and I love the lack of auto-format, which Word forces on me. It still has some bugs but IBM just donated a bunch of source code to them and ponied up some coin for them so it's future looks very bright.
All this and I'm a Microsoft Certified System Engineer, Gates and Ballmer would strip my creds if they found out I push MS alternatives!!