Sony VAIO YB Series VPCYB35KX/S 11.6-Inch Laptop (Silver)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program So in this market of not-quite laptop/more-than-a netbook, it's easy to get bogged down and flustered, trying to figure out which system is the one for you. Sony has tried to bring its own netbook/notebook to the market with the Vaio YB series, but hasn't really succeeded. It hasn't altogether failed though either, but let's break it down and figure things out.

Pros:

1.) Incredibly easy out-of-box experience. Connect battery, turn on. Run through a very simple Windows 7 setup, and you're done.

2.) Not an altogether awful amount of pre-installed software (though still far too many Vaio entries in Programs/Features). The 500GB hard drive (456GB after formatting) has 437GB available, which is pretty reasonable after a Windows 7 installation.

3.) The system itself feels fairly solid, despite its platicky nature, with little to no flex anywhere.

4.) A nice array of ports for an 11.6" laptop, with 3x USB, 1x HDMI, Ethernet, VGA, headphone/microphone, SD Card/Memory Stick.

5.) Nice resolution for the screen size, at 1366x768, and very bright.

6.) Decent battery life (4-5 hours).

7.) Raised palm rests that are quite comfortable, solid, and not smudge-magnets like many other systems.

However, the cons have to come in here, and there's a lot of them...

Cons:

1.) The screen, while featuring a lovely resolution, is desperately (and I mean desperately) lacking in contrast. Viewing angles are atrocious, vertically and horizontally, and I'm just not happy with the way text is displayed due to the lack of contrast. Black text just looks faded and grey.

2.) There's one fan in the system, and that's on the left side of the system. It's always blowing, and makes a noticeable whining in a quiet room. I wouldn't classify it as obnoxious, even under full power, but it's definitely present, and runs 100% of the time.

3.) There's 4GB of DDR3 in the system, but with Windows 7 32bit installed, only 3.5GB is actually usable. Even more bizarrely, after opening up the panel on the underside, I found my system is equipped with one stick of 4GB RAM. But despite having two slots total in the computer, it's only capable of 4GB max (even with Windows 7 64bit tested)! So one slot will always stay empty...

4.) The trackpad, despite being very responsive, is very, very small. Curiously, it supports multitouch (but not for scrolling that's taken care of on one side of the trackpad with one finger, and is adjustable). Pinch to zoom and rotate is present, but good luck doing that with one hand. I found I had to use the index fingers of two hands to make it work. A bigger trackpad would help.

5.) The physical trackpad buttons are very loud and click-y. Definitely not conveying a high-end system here (which of course, it's not).

6.) The E-series dual-core AMD processor in the system just seems to struggle doing the most menial tasks. Watching HD YouTube videos pretty much means not doing anything else, and there's just a general sense of "slow" surrounding the entire computer. This isn't helped by the pedestrian 500GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive inside. Thankfully the drive is easily swapped out for something faster (7200rpm drive or SSD, please!). The unfortunate thing is this computer feels slightly less netbook-y, but altogether not enough notebook-y.

7.) The keyboard's keys are not full size. You get used to this for the most part, except for two absolutely obnoxious keys: The right shift key and the question mark key. The right shift is the same size as every other normal letter, and I just can't get used to it. Any time I use this key (which is all the time), I have to look down at it to see where I'm pressing. And entering a question mark is even more difficult, since that key is even smaller than the right shift and they're both next to each other! Ohh the pain!

8.) While the keyboard has a nice, chiclet-style feel to it, the higher rows of keys (the numbers especially) have a noticeably "tinny" sound to them, which once again doesn't convey quality...

9.) The power LEDs (yes, there are two of them, side and top, for no good reason), are astonishingly bright. These things light up a pitch-black bedroom. Good luck to your wife/husband/partner sleeping with you using your Vaio. Bright green fills the darkness. Oh, and you can't cover the larger of the two LEDs (the one on the side) with some felt or duct tape, because the LED houses the actual power button!

10.) Extremely tinny/thin sound, but this isn't altogether unexpected. Use earphones.

11.) Last and definitely least, there are 5 individual stickers on the laptop out of the box. While easily removed, it feels like an advertisement for everything about your new computer. Windows 7 sticker, AMD E sticker, Dual Core Graphics sticker, Energy Star sticker, and the Sony goodness-this-thing-has-HDMI-and-weighs-only-3.2lbs sticker. So many stickers!

Overall, this isn't a horrible system. If you have big hands look elsewhere as the keyboard (and to a lesser degree trackpad) will drive you mental, but if you can get past the cons, it's quite a nice, solid computer. It's hard to recommend, but not exactly easy to dismiss. For the money, though, be sure it's what you want.

3 stars out of 5.

I ordered this laptop for my wife as a replacement for her aging MSI Wind netbook which has server her very well for almost 3 years but has become quite sluggish...

The screen on the Sony is gorgeous (although it has glare issues and a rigid viewing angle), and altogether it is a beautiful machine. It also comes with 4GB of ram which is high for a netbook and compensates for the netbook-grade processor inside the hood. Windows Home Premium is also a welcome upgrade from Starter, and loads up quite quickly.

However, in retrospect the laptop does not justify it's very high price, for 2 main reasons:

1. Build quality is OK but not magnificient, it looks great but up-close and personal you feel the plastic. I actually had to superglue the top part of the display, as it came shipped with a small gap.

2. Battery life is absolutely unacceptable less than 3 hours on a charge, simply browsing the web with WiFi. Come on Sony, this isn't 2008 anymore...

In hindsight the TimelineX series is probably a much better buy. It looks less good IMO (which was actually a decisive factor for my wife), but in terms of battery life, CPU, etc, it probably beats the Sony for about the same price (I have no first hand experience with it, but was debating between the two before the purchase).

Buy Sony VAIO YB Series VPCYB35KX/S 11.6-Inch Laptop (Silver) Now

This is a great product. Sturdy construction, great screen resolution, super lightweight, boots up reasonably fast (it's Windows 7), 4GB of memory value wise, it's hard to beat. Battery life is not staggering compared to some of the Apple products I own, but I needed a windows based machine for a specific application and this one did the trick.

Read Best Reviews of Sony VAIO YB Series VPCYB35KX/S 11.6-Inch Laptop (Silver) Here

Popup keeps coming up saying.

"Caution.

The installed battery may not be properly connected to the computer or may not be compatible with the computer.

Click "OK" to enter Hibernate mode, and remove and reinsert the battery.

See the eletronic VAIO(R) User Guide for more information about using the battery."

I would have given one star but Sony warned me of the pending lithium fire.

Thank you for not burning my house down :-)

And thanks to Amazon for having a good return policy!

PS When I say loose battery, I mean moves freely to the point you can hear it when you set the laptop down.

If someone had given me this as a gift, I would carry it in a bag so the battery wouldn't be able to slip out and go skipping across the floor.

Want Sony VAIO YB Series VPCYB35KX/S 11.6-Inch Laptop (Silver) Discount?

I am not easily pleased with electronics, and I have been searching for a decent lightweight (portable) laptop/netbook for months. I am not into purchasing overpriced anything (including laptops), but with this one I was willing to pay a little extra for a decent product. My basic requirement to the laptop/netbook was portability, but 10" was somewhat too small for me. I am also very easily annoyed by a slow computer (ie slow switching between the windows), so I wanted bigger RAM. I have been considering Acer one initially, but after seeing it in the store, I decided against it (mainly based on the looks and the screen). After quite a bit of hesitation, Sony Vaio 11.6" was selected.

I have been using this laptop/netbook for about 2 weeks, and so far I have been very happy. It looks awesome and is lightweight enough for a frequent traveler. The battery life is about 5 hours using wifi but this works for me. The screen is awesome, so bright and crisp! The overall look is very good, it does not feel cheap (as other similar less expensive models). Performance has been good as well. I am not using any memory-demanding games or software, but this computer is never slow. This is exactly what I wanted as I absolutely CANNOT stand a slow computer! The touchpad is extremely responsive as well. Wifi works just fine and is quite fast.

To sum it up, the purchase seems to be very well worth a few extra bucks, compared to what you will pay for similar cheaper models. So far, I like this product a lot. The only drawback I can see is a very bright LED light on the side, but considering everything else I am willing to live with this. Overall, a 5-star product.