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This is the third laptop I've owned and it is by far the best. When I originally started researching laptops I was reluctant to look at Sony because they always seemed overpriced. After reading reviews, like this one, I decided what the heck you get what you pay for and let me tell you this machine is awesome. Unlike the Dell, and HP machines I owned before this one is light, fast, and very portable at just over 5 lbs with a 14.1" screen. Let me say the only reason that I didn't give this VAIO a 5 star rating is because like many others I HATE all the pre-loaded software that come on a new computer and this one seemed to have more than most. Once I uninstalled all of that stuff and tidied up the hard drive this thing zooms. One other small drawback is that the standard battery doesn't last much more than two to three hours. Overall I am extremely satisfied with this laptop.

I purchased this lap-top as a birthday present for my wife, having had experienced excellent performance with a VAIO that I purchased for myself in back in 2004. I was a bit leary about making an on line purchase of such a potentially fragile item. Those worries were put to rest upon delivery, as it was apparent that extra care had been taken to ensure that delivery was prompt, and the product arrived in good condition.

My only regret in making this purchase, is that I didn't pay more heed to the concensus on reviews of the VISTA operating system (which came pre-installed on the unit). In the past, I had always heard of, (but pretty well dismissed) all of the negative publicity surrounding the release of a new O.S., because I had never experienced any insurmountable problems with O.S. up-grades over the years, some just took some getting used to. With VISTA however, you can add me to the list of "whiners". So many things are incompatible, and there are so many "unexplainable" malfunctions, that after 3 weeks of unsuccessful back-and-forth communications with Microsoft Vista Support (via another PC I might add, as we were unable to even perform e-mail & on-line functions with VISTA), I finally gave up & "up-graded" to XP. Things have been fine since then.

My excitment of owning a vaio all went into the drain when I got first hand experience of its performance. In general its processing speed is worse than a pentium 3. And I dont have anything saved on my hard drive since I mostly use it for internet browsing. Everytime I switch on my computer I wonder what will go wrong in the processing today. e.g. internet browsers take ages to open, or if you type its takes ages for the text to appear. I have tried everything possible.

Sony is unwilling to admit that they have a defective model. I would not recommend anyone to buy this. HP, IBM or Dell will provide you with better processing speed. Otherwise you are buying a model claiming to be a core 2 duo and you are getting pentium 2 or 3 at best performance. So if this laptop cant take internet browsing... then if you do more stuff I am not sure how it will take.. it may just crash. So BEWARE!!

So I read the reviews on here before buying this laptop 3 months ago (thanks!). I bought it for a long backpacking trip - so I wanted something smaller, with long battery life. The reviews here said the battery life was not what it advertised, and the screen can be pretty dim - impossible to see outdoors when you're on low power consumption mode. They were right on both counts. I would not count on more than 2.5 or 3 hours of battery, even just to type or surf the web, and if you're outdoors, maybe less since you'll have to boost the brightness of the screen.

Other than that, after it's gone through all the start up - and all the preloaded programs, it's reasonably fast and a good size for travel, though I think I'd go even smaller for a trip like this - it's a good balance overall. The keyboard is very nice, but the keys click when you type, I'm not too crazy about that, and there is no "end", "page up", etc... which I quite miss.

UPS lost the package,however Vann's was great and got me a very quick refund.I would buy from Vann's and Amazon again.