| Laptops and Notebooks Reviews : Sony |
 | Sony VAIO VGN-FW590F3B 16.4" Notebook PC
Great laptop....but.... -- 2010-08-22
I just received this laptop 2 days ago. I've been using it as I've been setting it up as my main PC. It has a great build. Feels and looks fantastic. I watched a blue-ray disc and it looked great on the laptop's screen. Bluetooth is nice to have to be able to listen to music from the laptop on my bluetooth headset.
I've used it on battery power and it lasted over an hour and a half, and I had the setting at "balanced". The system said I had over 62% battery life remaining and I had been viewing video, pics, and wireless web usage.
The only thing that I haven't adjusted to yet is the sound from the fan whenever it's plugged in. I have it set to "Performance" mode whenever it is plugged in, but the sound from the fan kind of is going to get some taking used to. It's not loud, but you can hear it when things are quiet. It's not much, but something I'll have to get used to.
The other thing, which is minor, are the stickers Sony put on the wrist wrests. I would have rather not had the stickers all over the the wrist wrests. But hey, that's just me being picky. It has nothing to do with the system or the performance.
Reason I gave it 4 stars: was because of the fan. Were it not for the fan noise, it would have been 5 stars. I'm sure in a month or so, I will be used to the fan and will change it to 5 stars.
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 | Sony VAIO VGN-NW330F/S 15.5-Inch Laptop (Silver)
Same thing happened to me.... -- 2010-08-15
Wish I had seen these reviews earlier since I purchased a 14-inch VAIO VPC-CW21/L model on Amazon in early May. Beautiful looking, and worked fine for about a month, before starting with "No Operating System Found" messages. Re-boots initially helped, but eventually not. Sony sent field service to replace hard drive (500 GB). Problems reoccurred within days, with next step re-formatting new drive. This did not help either. Now I see they evidently have known this problem existed, which frosts me even more. Still unresolved today!
The only thing these companies understand is never buying their machines again! Quality is terrible these days, too much indiscriminate cost cutting go on. So much for purchasing a "premium" laptop.
Had even worse luck with Samsung Rant mobile phones, with 3 of 6 new phones failing within 19 months! Terrible.
I Was Astounded! -- 2010-08-11
I loved the technical details. Then, I was intrigued by the customer reviews, i.e., a lot thought it was fab, a very few called it "junk."
I took what I thought was a common sense risk. I bought a REFURBISHED one. I figured it might have been one of the returned "lemons" which was now fixed.
Now make sure you don't miss this most important part: It came from WAREHOUSE CENTRAL.
When it arrived I plugged it in and it wouldn't even boot, greeting me with only a fatal error message!! An expert I took it to said "nothing in it recognized anything else in it"!!!
I can understand some flaw deep inside the works, but how can someone let a pc go out the door without even PLUGGING IT IN???
However, I must highly compliment Amazon.com, for they fully refunded my purchase price, immediately, before they even got the computer back!
i would say be very cautious, though, if the name WAREHOUSE CENTRAL appears ANYWHERE!
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 | Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S 15.5-Inch Silver Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)
Amazed at the Customer Service -- 2010-07-23
I didn't buy this laptop through Amazon, but I feel like I need to complement Sony somewhere. I bought this laptop about six months ago and three days ago when I turned it on there was a bizarre red blotch on the screen. It hadn't been damaged. I called customer care expecting to get a "it's out of warranty" response, but instead they told me a service technician would call me within three days and schedule a visit within 10 business days. On the second day the service tech called and asked if he could come by now for in home service. I'm in a big city so there's probably a lot of service techs here. The screen was replaced, not a cent out of my pocket, and no less than one phone call. I'm totally amazed by this!!!
The laptop is not bad either. :) Quick boot up, nice screen, I like the Sony quality and that's why I chose it from other laptops. But the kicker is, had this happened with another company I probably would have ended up paying something for the repair or taking it and leaving it somewhere for a few days. I'm so glad I spend the extra money.
Love this VAIO Laptop -- 2010-06-17
My last three laptops were HP, and this time I wanted to explore other manufacturers. I liked the design and tech specification for this SONY laptop and decided to buy. I have had this for the last 6 months and love every bit of it. I use it primarily for study and research, and the best things I love about this laptop are:
1- That it doesn't heat up on your laps, a problem I have had with my previous laptops.
2- Runs efficiently.
3- Very good at multitasking.
4- Additional SONY software are awesome.
I have had no issues with this laptop so far, but one thing I would liked to see on this laptop is the ability to receive more than two media card, because I have a Fuji digital camera which uses xD media card which this laptop doesn't support. The delivery was prompt and as advertised.
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 | Sony VAIO VPCEE23FX/WI Notebook PC
Great laptop at an excellent value -- 2010-08-19
I recently bought this Vaio model in black and I love it. Aesthetically, it looks sharp. The keyboard layout has spaced out keys and it even includes a numeric keypad. The mouse pad does have a different texture and I actually like it. However, truth be told, I have had some cases where the mouse pad has not been as responsive as I would expect. The screen is very clear and adequate in size. The laptop as a whole is lighter than I expected and looks like it is built with quality (in other words, it doesn't "look" cheap). The general specs of the system are excellent, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB Hard drive, DVD-burner, Built-in webcam, SD card reader, multiple usb ports. Therefore, you are getting a lot of bang for the buck! Furthermore, I was surprised that this laptop didn't come with tons of "bloat-ware" (unnecessary trial programs). Now a days, every laptop comes with an abundance of unnecessary, simply useless, programs.
Only real issue I have with this machine is the short battery life. I always have my A/C adapter with me in case I need to plug it in and I usually need to do that after about an hour. Otherwise, I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a strong laptop at a great value.
love it so much -- 2010-08-12
i bought the white sony vaio e series and i love it! its the perfect size for me and works great for college and i love how clear movies come out on it. i know i saw some people complain about the textured mouse pad but i actually like it alot i htink the texture helps move the mouse better then the smooth ones and yea it tickles a lil at first you get the hang of it the keyboard is a lil spaced out but i dont have to worry hitting 2 keys at once just takin a lil getting use to but i personally suggest this laptop to anyone had it over a month and no problems and the fan is working fine that was one of my concerns but i love it and for the price it was perfect i suggest this to anyone :)
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 | Sony VPCZ122GX/S VAIO Z Series Notebook PC
A Good Laptop For What It Is -- 2010-08-11
I bought this Sony Z12 (i5 520, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM) laptop here on Amazon.com via the seller called Vanns about a month ago now. So this review is past the so called "honeymoon period" but relatively early on in the product life still.
First I will say that overall I'm quite happy with the Sony Z12. It does have some faults but more or less hits the mark for a certain usage pattern - the "road warrior" who wants a super portable but full service laptop with high-res screen. I've used various laptops in this mode in the past, including the Sharp Actius, the Panasonic W5 series and Y5 series. That is the perspective from which I review this unit.
The Sony Z12 weighs exactly 3 lbs with standard battery, which is super for a 13" unit and that makes it great. Its easy for me to carry it all sorts of places with basically no burden. The screen is bright, the 1600 x 900 resolution gives you a lot to work with, although from time to time you'll need to CTRL + or - to scale fonts up now and then. I cant imagine needing the 1920 x 1080 version! I would say this is probably the 2nd or 3rd best screen I have seen on a laptop, exceeded only by the MacBook Pros (13 15 and 17 inch versions) which remain a cut above this laptop. But compared to most PC laptop this screen is way better in brightness, clarity, black levels and contrast.
This battery lasts me about 4 hours in "Stamina" graphics mode with Windows on "balanced" power setting,, while I am using wi-fi surfing the net, typing documents and screen brightness at 50& or 60% ish. If I dim screen more and use the most aggressive windows power savings I get about 5 hours. That's pretty good for a unit of this type. I had considered getting the extended battery, which would have taken total weight to 3.5 lbs,but so far it doesn't seem necessary.
The keyboard is excellent. I was not expecting it to be so comfortable but it is. Good size and spacing to the keys. Much better than other implementations of the "chicklet" keybaord that I have experienced eg in Acer 1810 and the Apple Macbooks. No surprise though as Sony was actually the originator of these type of keyboards.
The unit is very speedy after doing all the updates to Windows and the VAIO updates. And it boots up and shuts down really fast. But out of the box it was a paradox: operating very fast yet booting and closing really slow. All that changed when I did the Vaio updates. The one that seemed to make the difference there was the update to the BIOS. And that is with a factory install of Win 7 pro. I didn't reinstall the OS,although I deleted one or two of the junk programs pre-installed.
Another issue I ran into was that wi-fi was fine for first two weeks then one day I connected to a Zyxel 802.11 g router at home and the wi-fi suddenly started cutting out, requiring a reboot of the unit. I eventually installed an update to the wifi card from Intel's website and that did the trick.
I operate almost only in "stamina" graphics mode and in this mode the laptop is whisper quiet - and actually quite cool. Looks like they didn't skimp on the copper inside. I have played around with the laptop in "speed" mode and there it does get noticeably noisier - a level of noise that for me would be a little annoying. But for my usage the integrated graphics is more than good enough so I really have no need to go to the dedicated graphics card at all.
A small disappointment is the AC adapter, which is clearly not fully thought out as a companion to a ultraportable of this type. The adapter is actually quite light for a 90 Watt power unit, but is a little bulky and has no facility for winding up the wires. On this one Sony gave a bit of effort (I've seen much heavier 90Watt adapters e.g. on Dells and Lenovos) but Sony could have done better still for their flagship laptop. The AC adapter on my old Panasonic Y5 was smaller and lighter - and that was like 5 years ago.
The build quality on the laptop is pretty good from what I can see. I keep it in a Zero shock memory foam sleeve so that I have protection without compromising on the light weight. It's a 3lb laptop so of course there is some flex - unit of this type will get its durability in fact by having some flex rather than the rigidity that can be built into a 5 or 6 lb unit. But I can see that it is built well. And the palm rest seems like it wont scratch easily as some. At least so far that's what I've experienced.
Overall this has been a great purchase from my view. I don't think its a laptop for all people. But for a classic road warrior who typically buys ultraportables, I think this is a laptop I would recommend without hesitation.
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