I bought this notebook refurbished but looking like new. I believe this exact model has been discontinued. I paid less than 50% of the price new. On the plus side, this notebook is very portable, attractively finished, and has a CD/DVD disk drive. The keyboard is much better than most and the screen is very bright and readable. There are a few drawbacks, however. The power cord enters the left side via a flimsy female plug that appears delicate and prone to breakage, an expensive replacement proposition. The solid state hard drive is of low capacity (40 gigs). Replacing it with a larger solid state drive would be rather expensive. The touchpad is so sensitive that one cannot type more than a line before the natural movement of one's thumbs displaces the cursor to an unwanted area. So the touchpad must be disabled and a mouse used if one is to type anything undisturbed. Low weight and size makes this notebook handy for traveling.
This thing is small and thin. Feels like it has no battery. Actually does weigh just a tad over 2.5 pounds. The carbon fiber is impressive.
Speakers are lots better than my netbook, not near as loud as my other laptops. At their highest, movies are, let's say, comfortable.
The keys are chicklet style--widely separated and little push. But unlike my older VAIO S150, the cursor won't skip around while typing, so no need for Touch Freeze. Tight here.
At 11 inches it is much easier to type on than the my netbook, but not at all like my regular laptops. Probably no extended typing on this one.
The screen is...OMG! It's not that the color is brighter it's the saturation! Colors are high contrast and just jump off the High Definition screen. Like nothing I've ever seen! It's the saturation, the WHITE (no yellow) background, and the razor (and I do mean razor) sharp HD screen. When desktop icons make you stare.....
Processor speed. The Core 2 Duo Ultra Lo Voltage chip is as fast as any of my other Core 2 Duos. With the Core 2 Duo and Windows 7 Professional, absolutely no need for more than a gig of RAM. It has infinite settings and adjustments for everything possible. I set the power on the chip at 75% to extend the battery life (and not dim the screen), and it is sufficiently fast, but you can feel the chip tugging on the bridle. Powered down to 75%, and the ubiquitos Sony fan turned down to 'quiet', the battery gets 4 hours. I guess that's OK for the (LOTS of) use it has apparently seen.
The blue tooth, fingerprint reader, web cam, etc., I haven't messed with.
Biggest unexpected surprises--the saturation and sharpness of the LED Hi Def screen. Second, how fast that processor is. I guess I was expecting what I get with Goggle Chrome stripped down on my netbook, not what I'm getting with a real laptop and full-blown Windows 7 Professional. Third, how light and thin it is--even with the dual-layer DVD burner. Fourth the wifi--picks up places I didn't know existed. Has wireless a/b/g/n--and I still don't own an 'n' router. Finally, how quiet and tight it feels. 'Lean' I guess is the word, No fat anywhere. Not a speck of wasted space.
Disappointments--impossible to type on in poor light (those dark keys and pale lettering), and the mouse buttons are right on the front edge. Takes getting used to.
All in all, how Sony packed all the stuff into what looks like a netbook, I don't know. Nobody else certainly did. It is aptly described as ultra portable.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but it is a powerfully packed little unit that once was prohibitively expensive, and beyond the reach of us mortals.I purchased this computer in September of 08. It is an expensive computer and of course, I bought the fancy case. I truly appreciated the smaller notebook configuration and the fact that I could carry it easily. It worked very well for two years. In January of 2011, the hard drive failed. This was one year and two months after the warranty was out. I went to Sony customer service and found that, yes, I could send it in. However, the cost to me, minus shipping, would be between $400 and $500 for a new hard drive. I have communicated with three other persons who have experienced exactly the same hard drive failure with this computer. It is a newer, smaller hard drive and obviously does not function over time. If you do decide to purchase this computer I would make sure to purchase the extended warranty.
I have decided not to repair it and certainly will not purchase another Sony computer. We have an HP that is an 04 and going strong. My next purchase will be an I-book.
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