Sony VAIO 13.3" Core i5 Laptop

I never wanted an older laptop before but something about this laptop made me beg my parents to get it for me...I loved how the screen had a pink border and that's something you can't find in most laptops,although I do think that the pink color interferes when I'm watching something.The keyboard is nice and has a soft touch to it when typing however there are some keys that I thought I pressed but I didn't hard enough to show up.I absolutely hated the auto-brightness sensor that kept dimming and brightening the screen,I disabled it in Vaio settings but it would still do it when the power cord wasn't plugged in.Later on I figured I needed to install all the updates including updating the entire laptop to Windows 8.1 to get the problem fixed.The audio is decent, I discovered there are actually 2 different audio settings and that one is significantly louder if that fits your fancy.The webcam is utter crap, it has a huge lag and the quality of the video is all pixely which I actually don't mind as I don't do video calls and am not the 'Selfie' type of person :')I never thought I'd say this, but I actually like Windows 8, the lack of a start button was frustrating at firstbut I learned to keep going back to the start screen and selecting apps from there.plus I owned a windows phone for a good 2 years, so I've had practice. :DThe only thing that annoys me the most is the viewing angles. No matter how much I adjust the screen, it feel like it'snot facing directly at me and hence forth distorting the colors.Although the only moments when that really bothers me is when the websites I'm viewing have a white background (like amazon)Other than that I really love this laptop. I love the long battery life and the feature to charge your phone from itdespite it being off. Also the battery is really quick to charge when plugged in.It's a pretty nifty little laptop and I'm happy I choose it.

I purchased this computer and received it approximately 3 weeks ago. Within the first week and a half, the track pad stopped responding, and I had to reset the computer to the original factory settings. It worked great for about another week and a half, and then the internet applications stopped working! When I would click on the Internet Explorer icon on the start screen (or the weather.com icon...or the facebook icon...etc.) it would immediately take me back to the start screen! If I switched to desktop view and tried to open Internet Explorer, it just wouldn't open! Oddly enough, the Netflix app worked...as did the Nickelodean app. I did contact Sony...and the phone call said that I'd only have to wait 48 minutes to speak to a representative. I initiated an online chat instead...on my desktop computer. It took me 45 minutes to get "Sara" to understand that I couldn't do anything she was asking me to do because I COULD NOT ACCESS THE INTERNET! UGH!!!! It was so frustrating that I just decided to reset again and see if the next week and a half leads up to problems again.I love everything about this computer...it's size, color, backlit keys, etc...but I'd really like for it to actually work for longer than a week and a half at a time! Sony will most likely be receiving their computer back very soon!

The laptop itself is very nice, however, the Operating System is either not properly setup by SONY and not tested by AMAZON prior to selling the product. As a result I can not use the laptop now, i bought in April 03, received thru courier on April 08, after some time I opened the laptop to start using it, it never worked, the Return and Exchange Policy of AMAZON expired on May 09.So please tell me AMAZON Customer support, how am I gonna use your sold product, where I can bring this laptop for repair now, please don't leave me hanging for help in the air, I need to use this laptop- I hope for a miracle that I don't spend more than for repair than the cost of it when I bought in AMAZON.. I feel sad and very disappointed.

Windows 8 installed on it is really a pain. One week after I bought the laptop it started to give errors and then it said that windows is crashed and had a hard time to recover it because even the options for recovery was not working. It took me hours to restore it. Other than windows the laptop works fine.

TECH GEEK AND VALUE-HOLIC'S REVIEWI must admit that I spend half of my salary on latest gadgets though I do make sure that I don't overpay for anything (meaning I never waste money on overpriced products from a fruit named company and the likes).When I saw this laptop at 550 dollars at amazon, I knew i just had to buy it because the valueholic living inside me would never forgive meI am quite happy that I did pull the trigger (till now...I will keep on updating this article). This is an extremely high end looking and feeling laptop made of magnesium alloy and for this money you won't find a core i5 laptop, let alone one which is as light as this one (3.8 pounds), has a slot loading optical drive, made of magnesium alloy and carries an expensive brand name (sony) instead of acer or asus.However keeping aside what a great value this laptop is, here is what I think of this laptop during my two week's acquaintance with the product.PRO'SExcellent (I mean EXCELLENT) Keyboard and Touch Pad.Very Fashionable (everyone thinks i bought if for at least a 1000 dollars)Scratch Resistant Magnesium alloy Casing.Quite Fast with Core I5.Windows 8 is what Windows Vista should have been, an OS for the 21st century (see below as well)CON'SWindows 8 (can be daunting at first for technically challenged people)The Screen has quite bad Viewing Angles (and i mean QUITE bad). Come on Sony i know this is a cheap laptop but my 5 year old hp netbook has better viewing angle than this one.Sony product have proven unreliable for me in last 2 years. Let's see how this one holds out.______________________________________________________________UPDATE 1:1. I updated the touchpad software (synaptics) and upon restart the touchpad reverted to default windows drivers. I had to manually go to website and download and install the synaptic touchpad driver.______________________________________________________________UPDATE 2:1. The pc hanged and upon restart a message appeared "No Operating System installed". I went to bios and saw that internal hard drive is not detected. Thinking that the connection may have become loose i gave laptop a slight shake and Eureka the laptop started working.______________________________________________________________UPDATE 3:I absolutely adore the keyboard of this machine. Very Very comfortable to type on.______________________________________________________________UPDATE 4:The screen viewing angles have really started to annoy me. Come on Sony i know this is a cheap laptop but my 5 year old hp netbook has better viewing angle than this one.______________________________________________________________Update 5:I have gotten use to the screen bad viewing angles. The colours on the screen are quite good actually. The laptop did show "No operating system found" a couple of times after the incident, but for last two weeks it is working like a charm._______________________________________________________________________________Update 6: (After Three Months)Three months on, I have changed the review to 5 stars from four. That rarely happens with me as i grow tired of tech products but this laptop absolutely deserves it. The reason for change are:1. Amazing battery life,2. Very light and user friendly weight and dimensions3. Very good speakers4. Very reliable, after initial hiccups not a single problem5. Absolutely excellent keyboard6. And above all, three months of rough use and not a single scratch on magnesium bodyAn absolute must buy for its price specially if you want an optical drive.________________________________________________________________

This laptop was beautiful, well constructed, and performed well ... for the most part. However, my intended purpose was to drive an external monitor and to switch to Portrait view. The laptop connected to the monitor perfectly well. But, the switch to portrait was not doable. I contacted Sony online for help to resolve the problem and went through seven different technicians over two days to try and resolve the problem without success. Finally, I was connected to one of their experts (the eighth person) who verified that the problem does exist on three different Sony Vaio S series models that he had on hand that use the internal Intel HD4000 Graphics card. He turned the problem over to engineering and said that he would get back to me later on it. However, I decided to return it since I was up against a time limit for returns. The only other issue that I had was that I have a tendency to lean my palms on the laptop while typing and in so doing I inadvertantly hit the large mouse unit and my curser goes to a different location or different screen or whereever! The internal mouse scrolls well and is very sensitive but if you like to rest your palms while typing, you might not like this. However, you can go to an external keyboard which I temporarily did while I had it. Overall, I highly recommend this Vaio S laptop (great portability and long battery life) and if it were not for the inability to switch screen orientations, I would have kept it ... I really hated to part with it!

Just the right size, not too heavy, the pink keeps my sons away from it. Too bad it quit working after 2 days. The display died.Back to Amazon.

Always used Sony Vaio which have worked very well for me. This one had a motherboard issue after five days and just stopped completely.Although I had bought the product on Amazon, the sony store people in san jose were very nice and fixed it within a day. they also did a free back up for me because I had added some new files. the two stars is really for the sony service.

I'm in love with Windows 8 and this laptop! I would not be feeling the same if it weren't for my son's help. Everything went smoothly during setup, except I was having a frustrating time getting connected to the internet. Internet showed I was connected, all looked perfect, just could not get a good connection. I was feeling like I had the slowest laptop ever made, my Sony Vaio netbook was faster! I was not very happy. Disappointed, I even had another model laptop picked out after reading the reviews here.Thankfully my son, who's been singing the praises of Windows 8 since his beta version, informed me that I probably needed my drivers updated. He told me to use my other laptop to access Sony's website to get to the software/drivers needed for this model. I simply downloaded the update for the Wireless LAN, moved the file to a usb flash drive so I could install it on this laptop. After the update was installed, I restarted just to be sure everything was set, and like magic I had speedy internet service.My husband and daughter have different models of the S Series, only with Windows 7. I knew what to expect concerning the larger mouse pad, as it takes some getting used to, and can get in the way a little while typing. I like the lighted keyboard, and how thin this laptop is. I also chose this model because I'm not ready to give up my CD/DVD drive yet. This laptop has everything I wanted, except I plan to add more memory. I think it is at a reasonable price too.Anyway, everything is working great. Now I have only to learn my way around Windows 8.Wanted to add: Don't make the mistake I did an order 2x8 GB memory kit. My fault that I didn't notice that the 4 GB was fixed. I should have ordered just the one 8 GB of notebook memory to get the maximum 12 GB.

Common Sony, live up to your name.The specs are great and feature is sleek, but the laptop runs poorly. It's extremely slow for an i5 running on 2.5GH. When streaming on youtube or Netflix, frames are choppy. (Keep in mind that I had no applications running except youtube or Netflix.) So I can't imagine running MS along with a web browser and music playing. The driver makes a starchy noise when starting up. I even called Sony tech to run diagnostic and found nothing wrong. I tried hard to avoid the hassle of returning this product, but when it came down to reality, I couldn't live with a slow processor / computer. I let the price full me and now I'm paying shipping fee to return the laptop. I purchased the laptop at $609.99 but 5 days later it dropped to $559.99, now it's up $90.00 from when I purchased the laptop. I'm not sure what Amazon is trying to do here, but this laptop isn't even worth the $13.00 shipping and handling.If your considering to purchase this laptop, make sure your willing to deal with the consequences, or spend $13.00 as a shipping / return fee.