IM going to reiterate the Toshiba overheating with: every Toshiba that came through the shop had overheating issues. Some where "fixed" with a BIOS update, and some where doomed to over heating. Under clocking the CPU may have helped but we never tried that. Consumer grade Dells are also know for overheating.

Sony's have good hardware and a good solid feel to the cases. I just wouldnt pay the price they want for them.

I like the mid priced systems.

I wouldnt use a Mac on a day to day basis unless it was my job. IF my job was a graphics designer, web builder, audio engineer, or video editor I wouldnt complain about using a Mac. Since Im none of those the Mac OS only pisses me off as restrictive and non intuitive.

Middle grade gear using linux is like using Windows on Premium price systems.

And Linux has even less virus threats then the Mac OS does.

So Pem, checkout Ubuntu or Mint Linux as your main Operating System as they offer more flexibility over Windows or Mac OS. IF you absolutely need Windows you can run it as a Virtual Machine within Linux to get your work related stuff done. Running a virtual machine under linux is free, if you want to run Windows on a Mac you have to pay for the "privilage".