Sony VAIO SA3 Series VPCSA33GX/SI 13.3-Inch Laptop (Platinum Silver)

Over the years I've owned laptops from Toshiba, Compaq, Dell and Sony. Sony's have always been my favorites and this one ranks at the top of the list! It is a fast system with long battery life using the included sheet battery. Without the sheet battery it is very light-weight yet still has decent battery life.

The ssd drive really adds to the speed of this system. Even with bloated iTunes installed, it boots in less than 25 seconds and that includes me entering my password.

I would highly recommend this system.

To be honest, I was expecting more from Sony this time. I owned Vaio for the last 3 years, and guided by good experience decided to go for Vaio again. This piece offers good spec for low price, and its performance is spot on!

Boots really fast, system works out of the box, everything configured. I also tried a couple of video games all works like a charm.

But, as someone else here mentioned, the CPU fan is too loud. Whenever CPU does some "heavy" work, fan starts its noise and sounds like jet engine. This actually happens quite often, when I am copying files, video chatting, installing something or playing games. It is sad that this laptop makes more noise than my desktop.

This is a huge disappointment.

However, bright side is laptops great performance. Excellent backlit keyboard (even better than the previous one, which was fantastic as well). Display is amazing.

I hope that I will get used to the noise of the fan, as well as my colleagues at work.

I am also wondering if it would make it better if I install Linux, which I will surely try in the next months.

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overall it performs well and boots fast. looking from afar this proves to be a very attractive metallic like laptop. a closer look and feel would disappoint you a bit as the unit is made of plasticky material that looks like titanium but is not. Upgrading to 8gb is a breeze and removing extraneous bloatware is a tad of a pain as expected. Screen quality is typical VAIO, no complaint here. Available ports are adequate but not stellar. keyboard is much better than on the Ultrabook but not as nice as on the Macbook. A silver model (w/ a faster i5 than that of the previous SA23GX) is way more recommended than a black SA model but ... overall the plasticky build makes it less rugged for the road and susceptible to harsh handling.

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The positives:

If you're doing basic office stuff the notebook is blazing fast thanks to the SSD. I can't comment on gaming power. It will run a 1080p movie just fine with MPC and CCCP's basic setup.

High resolution screen.

I find it stylish enough and it's got pretty god build quality.

The included sheet battery is a nice touch.

The negatives:

The typical harddisk partitioning and bloatware stuff. I did a clean instal (which took surprisingly little time) to fix that up.

The screen doesn't have the best viewing angles.

Swapping between the Sandy Bridge graphics and the discrete card requires you to close all of your programs and flip a hardware switch.

Bottom line: I got this off Amazon for ~$950, that's a great deal on something this size with a 1600x900 screen and an SSD. I wasn't disappointed.

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Pros:

Thin, light and fast!!! Boot times are quick.

Even when clipped onto it's auxiliary battery pack, it still comes out thinner and lighter than most traditional laptops.

Cons:

Not quite instant-on.

Maximum SSD capacity is still far less than maximum IHD capacity in the equivalent model.

I just can't get used to that silly drag-down toolbar tracking the cursor around and getting in the way of window controls. Better put it somewhere innocuous.

It's sparking a bit of jealousy among the staff here.

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