You did good by going with the Vaio...if i didnt have a MacBook Pro I would have one of those....I like their design and the fact that they come with Blu Ray players.
You could have gotten a cheap HP laptop too. I got one for my dad last X-Mas for about $650 it's a Dual Core 2.0 Ghz with 4GB Ram and 320GB hard drive. the only downside i notice is the fan spins up often, but its no real biggie.
Also the days of paying "twice as much" for a Mac are gone....the cheapest MacBook is $999 and if you shell out 200 more you can get the lowest end MacBook pro.....you can find refurbished ones for under a thousand too, and they're usually just returned items that had nothing wrong with them in the first place.