I had the Sony 570 in my possession for a couple of weeks before I returned it. The screen is fantastic, no doubt. Battery life for me was about 100 minutes doing desktop apps. It will accept a secondary battery but Sony charges the insulting price of $250 for it.

If you are considering a Sony you should check out the posts on comp.sys.laptops. Sony's support has a terrible reputation, especially if you dare to install another OS other than what it came preloaded with. Sony won't even support you if you tell them you upgraded from XP Home to XP Pro. And when new OS's come out people bitch because Sony doesn't release drivers for their proprietary hardware or they have to hunt the support areas of other laptop makers hoping that that the modem (or whatever) uses the same driver. Sorry for the FUD but there are a lot of complaints.

But despite the support fears I still would be very, very tempted to go with the Sony for a true desktop replacement that would spend most of it's time sitting on a desk. That is about the finest computer display I've ever seen.

Yes, the Dell's are bulky but they have a lot of flexibility with a fixed optical and a modular bay that can take a second optical or second battery. They also have every I/O port you could want, internal 802.11b, long battery life...

One thing to note about the Compaq that isn't obvious from the specs: the screen doesn't use the newer LCD technology that is in the S607 and 570 you saw. If you window shop again compare those screens to just about any other LCD. You'll see that it has a much wider viewing angle, better contrast and wider color gamut. They are excellent and worth the premium, IMO. If only they offered them in 1400x1050 resolution.

-Dylan