This is the third, or 3.0, iteration of Best Buy's "You Spoke, We Listened" program. Some of the Blue Label laptop features are nice to have, but not ones you'd necessarily pay more for (depending on your needs), like one-year antivirus, three-year Intel PC Theft Defense, or 90 days Geek Squad phone and remote support. Since you can't really have too much security and tech support, having these features as part of the deal is a nice bonus anyway.

Much more important are the Core i5 processor, decent battery life (the Sony is rated up to 7 hours and 30 minutes; the Toshiba, 7 hours and 10 minutes), and 2-year extended manufacturers' warranties (twice as long as typical) found in both of the new laptops.

Also nice: The Sony Vaio VPCSC1AFM/S (yes, they really could've named this model better) and Toshiba Satellite E305 feature backlit keyboards, solid-state hybrid hard drives (for 50% faster boot time), Intel Wireless Display (to stream HD content wirelessly to your HDTV), and built-in Blu-ray drives. These upgrade features when customizing on other models can often bump up the price of a laptop by $150 or more.

So how do the Best Buy exclusive laptops compare to their non-exclusive cousins?