Great value for the price

By white arrow (Irvine, CA United States)

This review is for: Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S

That is my third Vaio laptop, and while this brand more expensive than the competition, I am very happy with this computer (and its older siblings, both still working).

Physically, this is not a tiny netbook. At 6 pounds, it is not something I will carry on airplanes, but that's not what I bought for her. As always, the Vaio's screen is nice and bright, and widescreen. The ports seem to be well placed. And the aesthetics are quite nice - it is a brushed, fingerprint-resistant silver. It really is quite fast (no gagging or whirring hard disk during the loading of programs, etc.) and it is extremely quiet. The keyboard has a little while to adjust, but it's nice and roomy, with space between the keys. The touchpad works well, and the DVD drive is also smooth and quiet. The HDMI port is working as it should with my LCD TV.

I have not tested battery life, since I do not intend to use this as an on-the-go machine.

I did not know much of what to expect from Windows 7, and while this does not write a Windows 7, it works properly on this machine. Most of my working Windows XP software, with few exceptions.

As usual, Sony packs in far too much garbage pre-installed on their laptops, and I really wish they would not, but I think that's the price of buying a machine like this. I wish they would include a disc for you to install the stuff, to instead require that you uninstall it. Surprisingly, however, Google Chrome is one of the pre-installed programs, so that it is good to have a decent browser directly from the box. Sony does not include a lot of all is the written documentation. Other than a tiny little book "First Steps", is all the documentation about the machine.

Overall I am satisfied with this computer so far. For the price, you are always near a desktop replacement, which happened on a laptop.