what do you think of the FX series Sony Vaio laptops?

[MrHappyMonkey]

I am negotiating with someone on eBay for a Sony Vaio FX 300 laptop. here is the original auction. The seller says he will sell it to me for $1200. What do you think of this series of laptops? How does sony compare to Compaq/HP, IBM or dell? Do you think $1200 is a good deal for this machine?

here are the system specs:

Mobile Intel® Pentium® III 1.2 GHz
15.0" XGA (1024 x 768) TFT screen
256 MB RAM (expandable to 512 MB)
30 GB hard drive
10Base-T/100Base-TX integrated Ethernet
CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive
full 1 year warrenty