I'm giving this one 3 stars. I don't see the big speed improvement when compared to my 2 year old Dell. Then again, I haven't tried any games that would take advantage of the 1G video card or heavy processor intensive work. I mainly use it for everyday use like email, MS Office, browsing, running a web site, etc.
Things I don't like:
Keyboard: It takes getting use to. Typing on the raised keys is defintly diffenent then the conventional keyboards.
Hard drive: Not the fastest at 5400rpm. I might upgrade to either with a SSD or a 7200rpm HD. Also, you can hear the HD spinning, reading and writing under the keyboard. Clicking sounds are a little annoying.
Memory: Only comes with 4G when it could support max of 8G. Comes with 2x2G and if you need to upgrade, you need to pull out the existing memory. It's a waste of money.
Weight: Little on the heavy side.
Comes with a Blu-Ray reader and not a Blu-Ray burner
Bloatware: :Added Value" or not, I've uninstalled tons of unwanted software.
Back-lit keyboard (goes off after few seconds. Can't leave it on all the time)
Things I like:
Large screen, 16.4"
Ease of making backup media in case the hard drive crashes. You'll need 3 DVDs.
Back-lit keyboard (makes it easier to see the letters in the dimmly lit room)
Price; I got mine really cheap as I bought it as an opened box and it was a previously retuned item.
Bottomline: Not a bad machine; I wouldn't have bought it for the full price;
Bought this laptop a year ago and of course after the one year warranty, things go south.
The laptop is flimsy, as the majority of the case is made from plastic. When you pick this thing up, you can feel and hear this thing cracking and flexing. Not Good.
As a result of the flimsy case, components began failing. First the blue ray player went out, but not completely, it still plays blue rays and burns DVDs and cds. It just won't read regular US DVDs. I've reformatted the hard drive, installed all updates, and cleaned it and everything under the sun! After contacting sonny about the problem they recommended the drive needs to be replaced.
Second, the hard drive failed after I reinstalled everything after the failure of the blue ray drive. Luckily I had an extra 320 gig laying around. The disk drive's failure was mechanical, possibly due to the lack of internal support or shock absorbing properties of the case itself. I do not travel much; it's a shame after about 4 trips in a backpack the drive/s fail.
After the hard drive and blue ray drive failures, I was convinced things were ok again. Wrong. As I am Skyping the wife, in mid sentence, the keyboard and touch pad quit working. I'm thinking virus, although I have up to date Norton, driver failure or something. After troubleshooting every software possibility, it turned out the ribbon that connects the display buttons and keyboard, have a bad connection. I wiggled the ribbon, which is located under the speaker panel by the caps lock lights, and the keyboard came back. The touch pad, however still does not work. So I took it all apart to find that a manufacturing flaw caused the ribbon of the touchpad to be pinched between the case. Over the course of a year, the thin and flimsy ribbon wore through.
I use a Bluetooth mouse so I had to borrow a usb mouse to install my Bluetooth mouse, but now everything is working, except the touch pad of course.
With how unreliable this computer is, I would never use it to type an important document, you never know when this thing will fail you. I'm going to give it to my 6 year old to play with.
On the plus side, despite the slow hard drive, the processor, graphics, ram and esata port are great.
The display is fuzzy, not very clear.
Never again Sony.
Seth
Buy Sony VAIO(R) VPCF122FX/B F Series 16.4" Notebook PC - Black Now
I purchased a Sony Vaio VPCF122FX and I'm not happy with it. It seems to be running hot all the time. The cooling fan is very noisy and you cannot watch a video or listen to music without this high pitch noisy fan running in the background. I've used a DELL E6400 laptop and it is super quiet by comparison, regardless of how many windows I've got open or applications I've got running.
Read Best Reviews of Sony VAIO(R) VPCF122FX/B F Series 16.4" Notebook PC - Black Here
This Laptop is everything you would expect It to be. Giving that your expectations are good. I've read some reviews and everyone seemed to hate this laptop. I love it, I've had it for maybe a week now and nothing has gone wrong so far.
