Buying a Vaio NR this weekend.. help! (run XP?)

So I THINK I've narrowed my new day-to-day laptop choice down to a Vaio NR because of the cheap price. This was over a Vaio CR, Vaio FZ, Dell 1420, and Toshiba U305. Because of price.

Question 1: Office Depot is currently selling it with a T5250 for $650 after mail in rebate - seems like a great deal, right? And BestBuy is selling it on Black Friday with a T2310 for $399. Still can't decide on which.... any opinions??

Question 2: I'd like to put 1gb more RAM in it. Is this easily accomplished?

Question 3: I just read on some forum that you can't downgrade to XP on Vaio NR's? What kind of crap is that?? Please tell me this isn't true. If so, I might have to pick a different laptop altogether with all the crap I've heard about Vista. Or am I overreacting?

Also, any suggestions as to other day-to-day/fairly portable laptops in the sub-$1000 thanksgiving weekend/holiday sale range? (you know, should I decide that I really want XP...)

Thanks,
derek

PS: Will Diablo 2 run on Vista? (i just got back into it - don't judge me )

 

I have the vgn-n365 e/b and love it. I didn't want to spend a ton of money either. Mine was $700. It comes with Vista which I really like. The machine runs pretty fast for me. See Flamenkos sticky on Vista tweaks. Also NinjaNoodles semi clean install to get rid of "BloatWare" it works.
It is really easy to upgrade to 2 Gb RAM I got mine from newegg for $75 takes 5 minutes to install. I say no to XP you can do a lot of changes in Vista to make it really similar to XP for all but the most nitpickey of people.
Hope that helped rather than confuse!

 

The VGN N you have is compleately different than the NR sillyman.

Mangrobang, you can install XP but it was never offered with that computer so you may have problems with some of the drivers, FN keys and S1 button.

You can try to use another Vaio Xp drivers to see if it will work.

 

Yeah Duckfart??Really?He says he wanted " any suggestions as to other day-to-day/fairly portable laptops in the sub-$1000 thanksgiving weekendX/holiday sale range? (you know, should I decide that I really want P...)" My suggestion is I have a n365 I really like.