Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E/B 13.3" Laptop (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 Processor, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium) Black

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought the Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E/B 13.3 inch notebook after 4 years with my old Acer laptop. The Acer was bulky and ran pretty hot, so this time I decided to get myself something more compact, since I want to be able to comfortably hold it on my lap. I have to say that I'm very pleased with this notebook.

This VAIO is very small and light. It weighs something like 4 lbs. Besides being compact and light, I also like the fact that it doesn't run hot. It stays cool pretty much all the time. The fans are very quiet and barely noticable, even when they spool up (which happens once every two days, if that). The design of the notebook is very nice. I wish it had more USB slots, but there's always some trade offs with a compact notebook. The biggest drawback is that the screen is on the small size. If you have bad vision you'll have a hard time with the screen resolution. Unfortunately the screen resolution can only be adjusted in such a way that it looks like absolute crap if it's anything other than the native resolution. I'm not a computer wiz, so I don't know how else to explain it. Personally, the 13.3 inch screen works out fine for me.

Other than that, it runs Vista without any problems. I haven't experienced any slowdowns so far. Overall, I'm very pleased with my purchase. For those looking to buy one of the 13.3 inch VAIOs, make sure that you are Ok with the screen size, because it may be a little too small for some people.

I bought this laptop for college, and it's the best laptop i have used so far!

First off, I have to say that this laptop runs VERY cool and quiet, even when gaming. My laptop temperature never went over 60C even when i was gaming, and I can barely hear the fan even when the laptop is under stress.

This laptop is FAST, It loads programs super fast, and it can multitask very well, I usually have more than 10 programs opened at the same time (firefox, aim, msn, yim, skype, itunes, outlook, photoshop cs3, etc), and this laptop has had no problems handling that.

This is laptop also gives you easy access to the RAM and the Harddrive, so it would be really easy if you want to upgrade the RAM or the harddrive(or a SSD) later on.

The screen is very bright and vibrant! I usually have to turn the brightness down a bit, because it hurts my eyes at full brightness.

The keyboard is very unique and easy to type on, and the laptop has a large and responsive trackpad, a fingerprint reader, you can use the fingerprint reader to log in to windows, websites, im programs, etc. very convieient.

The battery life usually lasts around 4 hours for under normal use, like web browser, word processing, etc

This laptop is very light, just a little over 4lbs, very easy to carry around.

its a really good looking laptop

when im at school, people would always be like wow that's a really great looking laptop.

The built quality is excellent, the cover and the palmrest area are made out of magnesium, but there are some flex on the right palm rest area, and on the screen, but not a big deal at all.

Pros:

solid performance

excellent screen

great looking

light

excellent battery life

cool/quiet running

mode switch

built in 1.3mp camera, and mic

Cons:

lousy speakers!!!

flex at some parts of the laptop

part of the laptop is made out of plastic

came loaded with bloastwares

VGN-SR290 Configure-to-Order, Fresh Start(tm), 320 GB Hard Disk Drive [5400], Standard Battery, ATI HD 3470 with HDMI(tm) Output, Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz), 13.3" WXGA, Night Black, Business 32-bit, 4 GB (DDR2-800, 2GBx2)

I placed my customized order directly with Sony on October 28th and received it on October 31st, even though I was told by the website to expect 7 business days to build it (I did opt for the overnight delivery). The packaging was safe and clean and I am completely satisfied, though when buying VAIO's at the store I noticed a lot more pride in the packaging, but who cares.

I opted for the Fresh Start option and was very pleased to get what I was promised; a clean machine with nothing to remove except for Microsoft Works. Vista did require multiple updates that took most of the afternoon.

I also opted for the medium operating system (slight upgrade), maximum RAM and best display. The overall performance for my needs in data manipulation and presentations work GREAT! I have not yet used the Blue Tooth or HDMI options for the display yet, but it has been GREAT so far. I do have to say the screen is a little small for programming, but for those quick items it works great (I have a workhorse of a desktop for heavier use). The keyboard is very friendly to my large hands. The size and weight makes it feel more like a portfolio or notebook than a computer (super light and comfortable. Overall, I would say this computer is perfect for anyone without vision issues and with a definite need to be mobile. It's small and clean profile makes for a great tool in business proposals and meetings.

This is my first computer with the finger print system. It is easy once you learn how to do it. The tutorial will confuse you, but once you get it, you have it. The password option is still there, so even after you set it up with finger prints, you can still use the password anytime. I found the fingerprint option a much simpler way.

The battery is the factory default. I wanted to go with the larger one, but I wasn't sure if it would be oversized like most laptop extended batteries. This standard battery seems to last 2 hours of continual use, or somewhere around three hours of light use. But it is new, and this doesn't prove much yet.

I bought this laptop for replacement of my broken Dell Inspiron 700M. I really like this laptop so far.

This laptop is nicely constructed and it is lighter than my Dell. This laptop is mostly made up of plastic and only the keyboard area are metallic. I am not sure what kind of metal did Sony used, maybe magnesium alloy as what they have claimed on their advertisement. The keyboard is really nice, it doesn't flex like many other laptops and it is very quite.

The machine remains very cool even thought you have your setting on maximum performance. It might generate little bit of heat on palm rest area, but it won't bothers you like my Dell. The fan is always on, however it doesn't make a lot of noise.

The screen on this laptop is best I have seen so far. It is very bright and sharp. You can adjust the resolution if you think 1280X800 pixels are too small for you. there are 4 different of resolution you can change to.

I was very enthusiastic when this machine showed up at home. Very light and very brilliant picture. The next day, while kicking back feeling pretty content and surfing for accessories, it died. Hmmm.....

I called up SONY and after jumping through all the normal hoops of button pressing and holding sessions I was connected with an operator who talked me through the troubleshooting process. I was not able to complete the troubleshooting that time but when I called back to continue, expecting the same hoop-la, I was amazed to find myself fast-tracked to an actual operator. The system recognized my phone number and that I had called recently. As I had suspected I was not able to recover the machine and my contact information was taken for referral to a local representative.

To my surprise, within 2 business days I had a call from the local person and the next day he made the repairs at my office. I was extremely impressed with this process and even though the machine died the day after I got it I was so impressed with the process I would buy another if the need were present.

Buy this machine, it's great and the support couldn't be better.

This laptop is great! I bought mine approximately two-three monhs ago and have not found one thing about it that I don't like. This is a great laptop at an affordable price!

I don't have this computer yet -- I just ordered it today, from Sony's website -- but I am just coming to warn folks to consider buying it from Sony's website. Not for any loyalty reasons (I'm actually more loyal to Amazon.com than Sony!) but because of the cost. This is a nicely configured computer, but at Sony's website you can configure this with a 2.4 GHz P series processor, 320 GB of HDD space at 7200 rpm, 4 GB of RAM, and ATI Radeon HD graphics with a HDMI output -- for $1329. If you want the pink version, add $50. You can get the total package, tax and shipping included, for less than Amazon charges you for this before that. (Probably not their fault.)

And if you are a college student, join Sony Style Campus and get an extra discount. Actually, you might get the discount regardless of whether you are, as long as you register an account with them and log in when you buy it. I got a further discount, which means that I got the above-mentioned configuration for $1238 before tax ($1398 + tax, and shipping is free if you opt for the 5-day).

I'll be back to review it once I get it.

Great computer. Very lightweight. You can put the laptop on your lap because it doesn't heat up like my previous two laptops (Dell and Compaq). It is very lightweight. The screen is very bright. The computer runs very fast and starts up very fast.

Cons: Lots of installed junkware but can be removed. The bottom of the laptop is plastics which makes it less durable. The resolution other than the native resolution is a bit distorted.

I've been using Fijutsu's Lifebooks for years so when this arrived, I was disappointed to find that I hadn't bought a compact laptop but in fact a regular sized heavy laptop. It is slightly smaller than large laptops but not small enough to make much difference, and it's far heavier than the two pound laptops I'm used to.

The screen looks excellent. It's bright and has great accurate color. The keyboard is full sized with plenty of space between the keys. The CPU is very fast as is the hard disk. This is the first laptop I've owned that had enough CPU, memory and a screen accurate enough to edit pictures and do color correction. The speakers are good although a lot of sound seems to be coming out of the bottom of the laptop.

The laptop does have a fan which isn't noisy but is certainly not silent. The laptop runs very cool but a warm laptop has never bothered me. There is a lack of USB outputs (only two) and there is no HDMI out, only an old VGA. It does have an SD slot as well as a slot for Sony's beloved Memory Stick, probably for the Sony employees who have to use them. The trackpad buttons are strangely noisy but they give you good feedback. Battery life is acceptable but nothing outstanding. There are lots of "mode" buttons that some may find useful but I have yet to push any of them.

Sony is known for loading their laptops with every mediocre bit of software available and they don't disappoint here. Allocate some time to remove a lot of poorly-written junk that will extend your boot time, fill your memory and clutter your screen.

What's especially annoying is that there is a very powerful Intel graphics chip inside, however the DVD application Sony gives you isn't compatible with it -- the hardware acceleration options are disabled. It turns out you have to purchase one of two DVD players that are compatible with the chip's MPEG acceleration (called Clear Video; check Intel's web site). Of course most people aren't going to know this so they'll run their battery down watching a DVD with the free software-only player. Even those who know about the graphics chip won't feel like buying a special player when they already got one with the laptop. Why can't Sony include applications made for the very hardware you've just paid for?

And I agree with those who say that Vista is a tremendous burden on the system. You can forget about using the first gigabyte of memory for applications because Vista needs that just to boot up. Unfortunately no Linux distributions support the graphics chip yet but support for it has been checked into freedesktop.org so it's on the way.

Pretty Good deal from AMAZON.com warehouse. Just a slight problem with the screen. I think sony needs to do something regarding the monitor frame, and screen of this model. Frames is too thin so it doesn't really support the screen.