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I decided to purchase a new laptop after my old laptop was taken over by the family for a variety of tasks. I was mostly happy with the system I had, a nice HP Pavilion system with a decent feature set, but considering that it is 2-3 years old and does not run everything I want to run anymore I wanted to make my upgrade to a new system worthwhile. In researching I found this particular system and I pounced on it, as I found it at a steal of a price. It is not perfect, but there is an awful lot in this notebook.

My very first notebook was a Sony Vaio, so I imagined that this would be familiar territory. I was greatly mistaken, as things have changed dramatically since then, mostly for the better.

First off, this is a fast system with lots of expansion room. This is very important to me because I do a little bit of everything - I do some gaming, I write software, I write short stories, I hang out online. I am not considered a power user in that regard so an AlienWare ultra-high-powered expensive gaming rig is not really what I need, but I don't need an entry-level system that is good for little more than checking email either. My needs are for a well-rounded machine that can do most things well. This notebook fits that need.

I am especially impressed with the bright, large screen. I do occasionally toss a movie DVD into the system and treat myself to a private showing of whatever movie I have chosen, and all of that screen real estate makes for an enjoyable experience.

As for DVDs... With Blu-ray built into this system, watching new media movies is not a concern. That's a very nice plus.

I like the fact that this system has two individual hard drives instead of one large one, as I want to create a dual-boot system and not wipe out the whole thing. I was unaware of this when I purchased the system, thinking I had a unified drive, though that was an oversight - the labeling and documentation are clear.

The system comes with 3 GB RAM, expandable to 4. Up to this point things seem to be comfortable in that amount of room.

My first task was to strip off the trial software I don't want or need, which includes MS Office 2007, Webroot SpySweeper and Norton 360. Some people will appreciate these applications but for me they are in the way and clutter the hard drive with unneeded stuff. If these applications were full-release apps with more than 30-90 days of use, I likely would keep them all but in my case I already have licensed software to use that meet the same needs.

The documentation states that there is a firewire port, a VGA port and an S-Video port, and it took searching the web for a manual with technical diagrams to reveal that these are hidden on the right side, under a cover. Nothing that came with the system says where to find those ports, and the cover that conceals these ports blends in well enough to truly hide them - I did not find them without help.

Even more concerning to me is the number and placement of the USB ports. There is one on the back, and two on the right side close to the front edge. I work with an external mouse but I use the built-in keyboard, and I am right-handed. So, if I plug anything at all into those two front edge USB ports, the cords interfere with my mouse use. The solution, then, is to plug a 4-port hub in the back and then plug everything in there.

The built-in speakers are all right, though nothing special. If you want better speakers plug them in and all is well. That said, the built-ins are quite acceptable for most use. You would not want to use them for listening to symphony music, of course, but they're just fine for gaming and general music.

I am very pleased with the graphics. My litmus test for gaming is Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, and both of these play quite smoothly. I have not loaded up Unreal Tournament 3 yet - that's next - but it should have no difficulty at all with that game.

I did run into one problem that required a call to Sony technical support. Because Sony does not include recovery media with their systems, it is up to the owner to create them and Sony makes it easy with included utilities. There are two options for creating the media - 1 dual-layer DVD or 2 single-layer DVDs. I chose the single dual-layer and after an hour of writing and grinding, the DVD ejected and the system said the creation failed. Assuming it was the target medium, I tried again with the same result. I called Sony thinking I needed to request the recovery DVDs and the technician told me that the single-layer DVD creation would work but that a glitch with this specific model prevents the dual-layer media creation from working. When I used two single-layer DVDs, everything created without a hitch.

This brings up a good point. Some places provide horrible service with operators that no one can understand. I got through in a reasonable amount of time (it was 5am but I still had a brief wait) and I got a very pleasant fellow who was very easy to understand (he did have and accent, though I could not place it) and was very helpful.

This is my desktop replacement system. It does everything I need it to do, it works well and it has a good feature set. It is certainly not perfect, but even at full price it is a good deal for what you get. It is NOT a top-of-the-line gaming rig but it's not marketed as such. If you want a good well-rounded machine, give this one some consideration.

I have had a preference for Sony computers for a long time. They are generally a little more expensive, but you seem to get more. The all-in-one configuration eliminates wires and cords running in all directions. Sony support is above average. All-in-all a purchase worth the extra money!

I really bought this machine for the blu-ray device and it's ability to use it with an HDCP compliant TV. Well it turns out that this machine has major issues with doing just that seemingly simple task. I have spent 3-4 hours a day for five days with Sony to resolve the matter only to lose WinDVD entirely. Just as an FYI the backup and recovery software from Sony does not contain the original WinDVD install. So please beware if any Sony tech person asks to uninstall it because there is no way to re-install it. They had to move mountains to get me the install back on my laptop again. And all I called about was to get it working on the TV...which is also a Sony 760p TV. So it never worked. Other than that this machine is fantastic. It does run pretty hot though so watch out and it's size and weight makes it a bit impractical for travel.

This is my third Sony and probably my 10th laptop. It is by far my biggest dissappointment in a Laptop and a Sony (especially for the price).If I didnt have to suffer a 15% restocking fee it would be on it way back and I would be buying the comparable HP model Circuit City put on sale this weeek for $434 less, even accounting for no tax and free shipping. The only difference on this model is faster processor speed. Here are my issues! First the computer has problems with all the drop down menus. It wont scroll properly; the only way you can get it to accept a selection is by holding down the control key and hitting enter. This includes opening up the screensaver menu and the sound menu. The screensaver menu will keep defaulting to Windows Logo and the sound menu keeps defaulting to a volume of 0.Speaking of speakers excuse the pun, compared to my Toshiba which this unit is supposed to be replacing the sound level is extremely low and very hard to hear.External speakers are going to have to be a must, even with headphones it is hard to hear movie playback. Although this computer is setup with 4MB of Ram it only reads 3MB because it is configured for 32-bit operation instead of 64, a waste of 1MB of installed memory.These are the issues I have found after 4 days of use. I'm afraid to see what else is in store. If it gets any worse I may decide to return it in any case and absorb the $$270.00 loss. I mainly purchased this unit for the Blue-Ray player which works fine and for the 17" display which works fine unlike the results encountered by another reviewer. Stay from this unit, you can find comparable features at a cheaper price from other manufacturers such as HP. I have never owned an HP but I would certainly consider it after this experience.

[Review of "Sony VAIO VGN-AR750E/B 17" Digital Studio Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)"]

This is my 6th laptop and my 2nd Sony VAIO. I've had zero problems with it other than learning VISTA's unique characteristics. It is capable of running graphics-intense PC games as well as a desktop (examples include City of Heroes and Neverwinter Nights 2) with most graphics features turned on, though a high-end desktop will probably be cheaper and have a larger screen than this. 320 MB is a ton of disk space (two 160 MB drives in a RAID array), and I've only managed to use up a third of that so far.

The LCD screen is large, high-quality and bright, and lacks that washed-out appearance that is common in others. Both Blu-Ray and normal DVDs look great, and of course the same applies to the games.

It's also more than capable of handling work-related tasks, including a full Visual Studio .NET development environment, and has more than enough memory to load and unload applications quickly. Yes, only 3 MB of the 4 MB of RAM is available to the 32-bit OS, but the other 1 MB is available to the NVidia video card - 512 MB on the card itself, with 1279 MB available system memory, for a total of 1791 MB.

Overall, I was looking for a notebook with a large, bright screen, plenty of horsepower and memory, that would be both a portable multimedia box and have the power of a desktop. This product fits those expectations.

As for flaws, there are but a few, and those flaws are perhaps better regarded as trade-offs than as flaws, per se. The primary trade-off is that this is a big, heavy machine, and runs moderately hot. A lighter machine that runs cooler would have a 13-14" screen and be significantly slower. You'll think twice before packing it to travel by air (doable, but most business travelers would choose a smaller, lighter, slower PC than this). Another trade-off is that if you're still on Windows XP, Windows VISTA will feel very different, and since VISTA is newer, there are more bugs to iron out. Personally, I've run into very few VISTA issues, mainly dealing with having to "Run as Administrator" to get things done. Finally, given the large amount of space available, the keyboard is of a normal, small laptop size - it would have been nice to have a larger keyboard, or perhaps a keypad given the extra space.

I'd recommend this machine to anyone else. I've owned it since 2/26/2008, and I'm using it to write this review.

[Note that Amazon groups reviews for products such as these. This review is for the model I specify at the beginning. Other reviews may be for slightly different models/configurations.]