My current laptop is a Sony from back before Macs went with (1) Intel and (2) high-res LCDs. I've been reasonably happy with it, with a few exceptions:

It came with XP Home. This ended up being a pain and I reinstalled with XP Pro. Good luck getting drivers for the Sony-specific stuff to work if you do that. I finally got most of it working, but the thing that changes power profiles when you plug/unplug the system has never worked since the upgrade. And they told me that since the system was sold with Home, they wouldn't support me trying to get Pro to work. Without a doubt the worst tech support I've ever dealt with.

You're right about the bloatware, however, I found that the biggest performance improvement came simply from defragging the hard drive. It was something insane like 80% fragmented out of the box. After a defrag, the computer was far, far, more responsive.

I'm currently on my third battery. It has been a while, so that's probably not beyond the pale, but just so you know that if you want to keep it for a while, make that price concession. With a healthy battery, the life is pretty decent. Hours at least.

Honestly, the only thing that would in any way keep me from getting a Mac when I upgrade is the one-button mouse.

As far as Bluetooth goes, I'd wait for this adapter to come out. (Check out the cool PCCard-stored mouse, too.)