I bought and used SONY Z505 for my boss when I was in China, at that time, I thought IBM was too ugly but later I changed my mind and decided to buy IBM T23 when I came to USA.
One of my principle of buying high-value product is that I will only buy the brand-new one, for this purpose I can wait for several months (anyway, I can use the department's DELL 24 hours per day). For example, when I decided to buy Walkman, I wait for half year and get SONY EX20, it is the most beautiful and wonderful walkman(now in China, it costs >1500RMB, and in USA, it costs $120).
But when I read the review article in
www.sundigi.com, I changed my mind and decided to buy GR250. It only costs $<1200, (and I think GR250's quality/price is the No. 1, better than GR270 and 290, and much higher than IBM) but if I buy the T23 with the same capability, it will costs around $3000.
I mean I would rather buy GR250 at this time and buy some IBM T24 or T30 some times later when I have more money. (in fact, I win some outsider award of $4000 besides my common salary).
In USA, IBM is mainly for business man, they use it for work not for pleasure.
There are some drawbacks of buying SONY, that is, when you decide to buy digital camera, you will think that you's better buy SONY to make full use of your notebook.
I am sorry I can not input Chinese(although I can read it), and my selection is based on my principle (only buy brand-new one, not second-handed). I share the same viewpoint with one of my friends, when I buy a book and read through it, it will still like a new book, if someone read my book and make it untidy, we will send this book to him because even cheap as a book, in our eyes, new book is a virgin. So when I buy something worth above 1K, I will only consider new one, not to speak of something worth above 10K.
Certainly as an economics major, I think highly of E-business, especially the second-handed E-Business.