Maybe its not what you had in mind but my last two laptops have been two year old powerbooks purchased on ebay. So I'm coming to you now on a Powerbook G3/500MHz/Firewire/DVD-ROM/512MB/20G HD with Airport Card at a cost of $750 (bought about 8 months ago).

I think this computer has at least two years of life left in it easy.

Its a lot nicer than a lot of new PC laptops available now (lets not trot out the MHz numbers - this machine is plenty fast for development - even Java development).

RE: Sony. Sony makes some really trick stuff. But they have a consumer products mentality. All their stuff is a standalone disposable gem. I think they just released a bookshelf stereo with a HD that automatically digitizes your CD's in the background so you only have to insert your disk once and then you can play your music anytime - disk or no disk. But it uses proprietary audio encoding, has no network connection for getting cd track names or for moving your music to another device. That seems to be how they approach all their stuff - neat but not forward looking.