I love my laptop!

I bought this laptop right after I finished high school in May, in order to have a laptop to bring to college. At the time Sony and CompUSA were running specials, so my laptop was priced at $1,750 but after the $100 and $250 rebates I only spent $1,300. Not too bad, for the quality of laptop I received.

Since purchase, I have almost filled up the harddrive, taken the laptop to New York, and walked around campus with it almost daily. Its thinness comes in quite handy when I have it in a laptop bag, because unlike many laptops I have room in the bag to include a book or two, and two spirals for class. Its a tight squeeze, but unlike my friends laptops it all fits in. I dropped the laptop inside its bag once, but it did not suffer any hardware damage.

Pros: The thin design is wonderful, as I elaborated on earlier. It is also much better looking than many laptops I have seen, with grey and black as opposed to solid black. The key click isn't too terribly loud, and the touchpad is quite sensitive.
The factor that makes Sony Vaio's more expensive is that they do not skimp on part quality. The Dell my Boyfriend has does not have nearly the same quality of screen, touchpad, harddrive, RAM card or video card.
The video card is a Nvidia Geforce Go6200. While not the most wonderful card available, it is eons better than the average laptop video card. Intel video cards cannot compare. It renders images sharp, crisp, and fast, which many other cards cannot even hope to do.
You might not think that a Dual Level DVD burner would come in useful at any time, but when you are trying to burn a DVD to play on a TV, you can burn high quality dvd's with this burner. A Dual Level burner can create a DVD comparable to the ones you buy in a store, for a fraction of the price. It is not something I would have paid extra for, but I am very glad that I have it! It also burns CD's incredibly quick; I can burn a 16 song CD in less than 2 minutes.
One of this model's biggest sellers for me was the 1GB of ram. When you run as many windows and applications as I do, having the most amount of RAM possible is important. This card is also in an easy to reach location: it is directly underneath the keyboard. Thus, if you feel the need to upgrade, you can take out the keyboard and the RAM card is directly underneath, and easy to replace.

Cons: Yes, this computer does have some cons.
For the money, Sony could have installed a faster harddrive. If we are paying extra for quality components, then why up the others but leave this one at a bargain-bin low? Having the slower harddrive slows down the computer as a whole, negating some of the benefits of other faster parts.
This computer is definitely not a long-term portable computer. Its battery life averages only 1 1/2 hours, with light use. If you try and multitask, then you pray for a little over an hour. I wish that the battery lasted longer, because if I do not find a plug during some of my longer classes, the computer loses power before the lecturer runs out of steam.

Overall, this is a wonderful computer for the price. If rebates are not offered, then I would consider looking at other computers in the Sony lineup, but for the price, there really is no other computer brand with the same quality as a Sony. After dealing with the lackluster *expensive* Dells my family has bought, Sony certainly has me for life!