self portrait #7

So folks, choose your corners... I'm about to buy a new laptop and was wondering what you'd go for, first though the story of why I need a new one...

I was working in Australia just before Christmas last year and the day I was leaving, I left my rucksack in the car and went for dinner, just before heading to the airport. The car was broken into, rucksack stolen - contents of rucksack = 2 x laptops (works and mine) and 2 x passports (mine and Biz's)! It's scary being in another country without a passport, but at least it was Aus. Anyway, got passports, got home, got insurance...

So... I have a big pile of cash just waiting to be spent on a laptop. The laptop that was stolen was a Sony Vaio AR21S. That particular model has been replaced with the AR31S, but it's basically the same machine just now sporting Vista instead of XP. At the time of purchase I was also considering a macbook pro and now I'm in the same boat. The hardware is almost identical, 17 inch widescreen display, nvidia graphics in each. 2GB ram in each, intel core duo in each (macbook - 2.33GHz, vaio - 2GHz). Vaio has rewritable blu-ray. Dual sata 80GB hdd in the vaio, 120GB single hdd in the macbook. They both look cool, the apple is silvery, the vaio is shiney black. The vaio is 1080HD compliant

I use my computer for programming (just perl and c, so basically any o/s will do for that), web design, games, photo processing along with the usual web/news/email/chat.

I'm equally comfortable in either o/s, am more productive in windows (keyboard shortcut boy), but that's just familiarity.

I play games <- that is the sticking point... Is the mac as bad for games as reported (I already have a big back catalogue of PC games). Is parallels an option here? What about bootcamp?

I'm also slightly concerned about the apple being on the cusp of a new iteration of their O/S, will I need to shell out again after I've just bought a new machine?

The macbook is slightly cheaper than the vaio, but I'd never let something as vulgar as cash make my decision for me.

fwiw, I think David Mitchell is the funny guy in that pairing, does that mean I should go for the vaio?

What would you go for... and why? Your views are appreciated. :-D