My job is in technology and if you are looking for a pure speed aspect, Sony's have benchmarked the best in my labs. We test Dells, Compaq's, Macs and various PC's, but Sony is the clear leader in pure speediness.
For my personal rig, I run a Sony with Ubuntu and it just works. My secondary laptop is a 17" Macbook Pro, but I have been running Linux based OS's for years and just can't get away from this OS. Love it.