Sony VAIO VGN-SR510G/B 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Professional)

I am not a big fan of throwing "best of this and best of that" labels. There are, however, items that deserve such labels and I think the Sony SR is one of them. I bought this notebook for my media production company. I personally use it when shooting on location tethered to a camera. The quality, performance, and design aspects are very impressive and come together to serve the user very well.

The best aspect is the LED screen, which produces correct colors and perfect luminosity gradients. Furthermore, the screen resolution is 1280x800. That produces a resolution aspect ratio of 1.6 which is very close to the aspect ratio of my 35mm camera's native files resolution. This means I can view my pictures at full view with very little space going to waist in vertical bars at each side of the screen. Other ultra wide notebook screens produce a resolution around 13##x7## waisting so much screen space on each side in full picture display. Also, browsing the web at such resolution makes pages too shot, requiring constant vertical scrawling. With the SR native resolution, browsing feels natural.

Performance wise this computer was capable of handling everything I threw at it. The 4Gigs of ram and 64bit operating system for example makes starting and using Photoshop CS4 RAW for checking white balance a breeze. The laptop is also light weight and solid. Using this laptop in my work places allot of stress on the chassis. I constantly reach out for the notebook and hold it with one hand, lifting its full weight from one side but feeling no flexing or hearing cracking sounds period.

I researched allot of notebooks, many of which had very unique features this notebook did not have. Ultimately I narrowed my choice between Asus and Sony. Asus offered better value but this one won because of the better screen.

I was very impressed with this laptop. I have been a Dell owner in the past, and this is my first Sony VAIO. It is extremely lightweight, runs Win 7 and it's Aero interface perfectly. I was dubious about the fingerprint reader and it's usefulness, but it works pretty well both to sign on the appropriate user under Windows, as well as offering a fingerprint-protected file area, which I thought was neat. The only slight issue I have, was that my girlfriend has very small fingers it took a long time to program the PC with each one, as the reader software complained that she didn't swipe long enough. After programming, it worked well though. The wireless N card picked up my dual band Linksys router with no issues at all. I have yet to see if it will do the 6.5 hours on battery as stated. All in all, I am very impressed and would certainly look at VAIOs again.

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I've been using my new Sony Vaio 510 for about three weeks now and I'm very pleased with it. I love how light and fast it is and I especially like the feel of the keyboard. Perhaps the sound could be a bit better and it would be great if the battery power lasted longer (mine lasts about 2 hours and 45 minutes), but this laptop is such a major improvement over my cruddy Toshiba that those things don't bother me at all. I'm really happy that I went with this Vaio.

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Just for some background: I'm a person who takes excellent care of his electronics. Of my previous two laptops before purchasing this laptop, the first was a Toshiba that lasted 4 years before mechanical wear and tear, coupled with the warranty expiration, led me to purchase a new laptop; while the second laptop, a Dell has worked for 4 years and still works today. I chose to upgrade and keep my old Dell as a backup.

I usually do not post reviews for electronics items until after at least a year of use since any manufacturer can make a product that can impress for 30 days. The trick is to build products that last, or at the very least have good Customer Service. I had heard from friend's that Sony's laptop quality and customer service had improved since the dark days of the past, so after reading this laptop's specification and price, I decided to take a chance on a new brand. Here's my list of pros and cons.

Pros:

Extremely lightweight

Beautiful screen (while it lasts)

Fingerprint reader works great

Keyboard is fantastic

Trackpad works well

Wireless card range is great

Runs most programs well (I would not recommend this laptop for watching HD movies [Slows down while playing 1080p clips on YouTube] or playing computer games at the highest graphics settings, but for most uses, this laptop performs great.)

Cons:

The battery life is nothing to write home about at best 2 hours, perhaps 3 hours if you dim the screen, turn off the wireless card, and only run Microsoft Word

The sound is pretty poor. It's not terrible, but any sort of ambient noise, and you can barely hear the video or music playing.

Customer Service Experience is pretty poor*

*10 months after buying this laptop, the left half of my screen suddenly stopped working. If you were to draw a straight line bisecting my screen, the left half would be full of vertical black lines, while the right half would work perfectly. I called Sony, and they agreed that the screen should be replaced, and they told me that they'd be shipping a new LCD screen to a local service center, and that I should expect a call within the next week to schedule an appointment to fix my laptop. Sounds fantastic, right? Over the next 5 weeks, I called 3 times, and I was repeatedly told that Sony Customer Service is having issues with their computer system, and that I should expect a call from the local Sony service center within a week. TODAY, I finally learned that my new laptop screen has been on backorder this whole time, and that delivery of the screen to service centers should begin at the end of this week, and I should expect a call (wait for it!) *next week*. I'm so frustrated that they kept telling me that the laptop screen would be ready within a week, despite it being on backorder (which they never mentioned), that I feel the need to warn people of Sony's terrible customer support. I'm not angry that my screen was on backorder. It happens, and there's nothing they can do to make the screens faster. I'm angry that it took 4 weeks for somebody to tell me that my screen was on backorder. I was very calm and reasonable for each of my 3 phone calls (more worried that my service request had been accidentally ignored or forgotten than anything), and I believed them each time they told me that they were having trouble with their computer system, and I should expect a call within a week because they were flagging my service request as a priority.

Note to Sony Customer service reps: If the replacement part is still being built, just tell me. Don't lie, say the repair will be all set in a week, then hope that when I call back I don't reach you and instead have to deal with one of you coworkers. It's pathetic.

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I've been using my new Sony Vaio for about a month. it is such a beautiful laptop, I'm very pleased with it. I bought 2 external Logiteck speakers that work on USB power only in order to get better sound, the sound could be a bit better This laptop is such a major improvement. Better than other brands such as Toshiba, HP and Acer.I'm really happy that I bought this wonderful vaio. GO FOR IT, you will never regret it.