



Budget laptop: Sony nailed it!
I've been using NR-160E for 6 months and have never been happier about my laptop. In the last 2 years I've been through 2 Toshibas and one Dell. And those lappies made me want to get rid of them as soon as I got them. The Toshibas were noisy, the Dell was built very cheap and the screen was blurry. So, what do you get with this Sony? (I'm going into the spec detail, as the budget laptops are basically the same now) .
a) Wonderful screen - crisp and colorful
b) Excellent performance. Very quiet. From normal distance (3ft) you can't here the fan at all and all of the time! Rather fast. This is faster than Toshiba with 1.67 Mhz C2D processor. Really, both Vista, both C2D, both 2MB L2 cache, but Tosh is 1.67 Mhz is noticeably slower than 1.5 Mhz Sony - go figure! I thought I'd need to get another stick of RAM here. No, 1G works perfectly alright for me in net browsing and Openoffice text, spreadsheets, video watching.
c) it's very comfy and beautiful to look at (the brown one). It comes with textured hand-rest panels (much better than those glossy- "hello sweaty palms"- Toshibas) and excellent comfy keyboard.
Definitely, a keeper!




Great laptop, especially for the price
I've had this laptop since November 2007, and I have been EXTREMELY happy with the purchase. I previously had a terrible Toshiba P35 that was dying a horrific death, and I needed a computer on which to write my dissertation. Needless to say, the Sony NR120E has exceeded my expectations for a relatively cheap laptop. Quick pro/cons:
Pros:
- Great, vibrant screen (great size for a screen, you definitely don't need an external monitor with this computer)
- Good keyboard, very comfortable for typing
- Easy access to 4 USB slots, with two slots on either side of the computer
- Lots of connection options, memory stick, SD card reader, etc.
- Big hard drive for a laptop of this price
- Everything works, no severe hardware problems thus far
Cons:
- Battery life is definitely closer to the 2 hr range, rather than the maximum 4 hrs specified by the manufacturer
- As mentioned by other reviewers, lots of junkware pre-installed
- Not the fastest laptop ever (but it is quite good at handling multiple open applications at once)
I would definitely recommend upgrading the RAM to 2 GB. I also recommend using the "Ready Boost" feature with Vista. I am using a 2 GB memory stick that fits into the built in memory card reader, and so far, Vista is working great - sure, it's a resource hog, but I have had no problems with crashing.
One more thing - be sure to upgrade this computer to the most recent BIOS and drivers, provided on the Sony website. I initially had a problem with the wireless connectivity on this computer. The wireless connection would disconnect randomly, and the only way to re-connect would be to re-start the computer. Upgrading the hardware drivers and the BIOS fixed this problem completely.
This computer has a great design, and most importantly, it works fantastically. For the money, that's all I could ever ask for...