ok gotcha, so its for the paper itself, you aren't looking to purchase one!

With that being said the netbook is made for the basics, it doesn't run a full OS and is noted to fail rather quickly. It runs the atom processor, which is a basic dual core CPU that the new tablets can out perform. It runs the graphics from an integrated GPU built into the motherboard, and uses both the CPU and RAM to process, in essence crippling the system when anything of substantial load is run. It generally runs off of 1 or sometimes 2 gigs of RAM something that is barely sufficient to run the "starter" edition of the OS, not to mention any program of substance. It was a fad that was a nice lead into the tablet phase we are in now.

The Vaio on the other hand (although again there is a huge gap in price ranging from around $600 to $2000) is a computer made to be a work horse. They are generally priced above other laptops in their category, but boast a plethora of special features and pre-loaded software. They are the "mac" of the pc world, trying to include software for easy picture/video editing, creating, and managing. Most of them are running one of the i5 or i7 cores from intel, as well as dedicated graphics. The dedicated GPUs give the series a HUGE advantage over other pcs that only offer integrated graphics processing (ie the intel 2000 or 3000 series graphics). They are also noted to be fairly reliable long-term.

The macs are a whole different story. Being that they pretty much have all the parts custom made for them (ie their foxconn mobos, and HDDs) they tend to last longer than the average PC. Whereas most pcs are "pieced" together and not much thought goes into their design, the Macs are designed from the case up. One of the key features that separates them from their competitors is their aluminum frames/bodies, and extremely high quality standards. They are also noted to be "immune to viruses" something that apple has clung to, stating "Macs are immune to all PC viruses" a pretty stupidly obvious statement for most of us PC folks, however they are not at all immune to viruses, they are in fact more suseptable to viruses than pcs are, they just don't have the market for a rapid spreading virus to take hold (although check this out...http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...s5S_story.html)

As for a comparison between the three its pretty difficult to do with the netbook involved, seeing how it is a dying/dead technology, compared to some pretty cutting-edge stuff with the vaios and macs. Between the vaio and the mac its pretty much a preference. Being a pretty hardcore PC guy myself I have to say that I defiantly like the PC platform better than the macs, but will gladly admit that the macs are better-built, and quite frankly better thought out than the PCs.