I have a Sony Vaio (FZ290), and I'm pretty happy with it in general.
There are 2 problems however:

1) When I try and put it into standby, about half the time it doesn't go into standby, just turns off the screen, and keeps everything else on. The lights on the front indicate that it is still on, but the screen stays blank no matter what I do.
I've waited for 30 minutes for it to go into standby before cutting the power manually with the button...

2) When I do get it into standby, about half the time on resume from standby, explorer.exe crashes. I'm not sure why, but it's bloody annoying. It starts back up, however it is still annoying to have it doing that...

I am running Windows Vista Ultimate. I do not have SP1 yet, but I will be trying that today.

I was going to suggest SP1 but it looks like you're in the process.
I usually disable all of the power management in the BIOS, and let Windows take care of it.
I tend to be re-format happy, but the first thing I do when I get a new lappy is to reformat and get all that proprietary software off it. Ever see the mac comercial where the guy is all fat and blated? Anyway, factory laptops are installed via an image. Sometimes that image is less than perfect causing instability.

Yeah, I know that the factory laptops have a lot of bloatware on them...
And they usually are pretty messed up. I was hoping to avoid the reformat because I'm lazy and don't want to spend the 2 days to reload everything and all... but I think you're right in the end... if I keep having this problem, I'll probably have to reformat.

I kinda wish they would just send me the OS CD/DVD and say "Have at!" when I order a new computer... but oh well... we can't have everything...

I know... I hate reformatting. I always loose the driver CD, or can't find something obscure.
Back in the glory days (mid to late 1990's?) it was feasible for a company to run a script or slipstream every install. Now with even the smallest companies churning thousands of machines out every day - it just isn't possible.
If done correctly the imaged machine should be fine. But sometimes board manufacturere change a single chip or other various mobo resources and it doesn't quite match up with the driver installed via image and you get s stability issue.