Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-SR220J/B 13.3-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium) Black

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

 

 

Let me first state that I got a Great deal on this laptop which factored into my rating. Right now Staples has it for $800 and there is a $450 trade-in offer from SONY if you exchange it for any Dell laptop ($300 for a non-Dell laptop). So, for $350 (+tax) after rebate, it's the "Deal of the Century" as Sony is also including a mail-in offer for a Free SONY Mobility or Productivity Bundle until 6/30/09. I opted for the Productivity Bundle as I wanted the docking station. It also comes with a bluetooth Mouse and a slim AC stick. So, I simply could not resist this deal ! Sony is obviously trying hard to take away some of Dell's market share and I have to admit that I was happy to give Sony a chance.

Having said that, this laptop is not perfect but unless you are going to spend $2K, I don't know many that are. I have owned my share of laptops which include HP/Compaq , Asus eee, Lenovo, Sony and several Dell models.
My biggest complaint about any Sony laptop is the amount of crapware that is installed into their laptops. It really is shocking. I strongly recommend you do a Clean Install . It makes the laptop at least twice as fast if not faster. You can remove the programs manually or use pcdecrapifier if you are not comfortable doing a clean install. Neither will yield a perfectly "clean" hard-drive but it will get most of the junk off your computer. And before you proceed, make sure to make Recovery Discs as they do not ship out with any. It comes with VISTA OS which I have personally had a great experience with. I know there are a lot of haters out there but it is now a mature OS and I would recommend that you give it a chance before joining the "Vista Sux" club.

The Best Part about the SONY is the Screen. WOW. I love watching TV shows and movies on my laptop and the image is nothing short of stunning. I have been very disappointed in the past with the screen on my Dell 15.4" laptop. I can't even bear to watch anything on it Full-Screen as it only accentuates the poor image. The speakers unfortunately, is not up to par. In fact, they are actually "bad" so I end up using my BT headphones with it almost exclusively. It's kind of surprising as SONY is known for their "entertainment" factor but oh well. A lot of people have also complained that there is no HDMI port even though there is a space alloted for one. If I could redesign this laptop, I would definitely add better speakers, HDMI, more USB ports (!) and maybe a backlit keyboard.

Overall though, I am very pleased with my Sony laptop. I think 13.3" is the perfect size offering both portability and decent screen + keyboard. I have also owned a Dell m1330 (they are very similar) but the Dell unfortunately does not offer a docking station which is essential for me. The SONY anticipated that buyers will use this laptop for both Work and Play and you can even set different "modes" with different websites, bookmarks, programs ETC which is a nice feature, not a crucial one by any means, but still a nice idea. Finally, it does get WARM but not HOT and I have used it for hours with it on my lap (wearing shorts) with no problem. It is also whisper-quiet (except for when playing a DVD) which I appreciate. My HP's fan was so loud that I ended up giving my laptop away to a family member. If you can get this laptop for less than $600, I would definitely recommend that you do. I have not yet had to deal with SONY technical help dept so I can't comment on that aspect but I am hoping that I won't have to !

This laptop is great, once you do a clean install of Vista. The fingerprint reader is a time saver when you have to log into websites. If you don't do a clean install of Vista, then all the crapware Sony puts on the laptop will slow it down greatly. Doing a fresh install is easy. Just boot up your laptop as usual and create the OS reinstall discs (there will be 4 total if using single layer DVDRs). Once they're created, go through the procedure to reformat and reinstall the original image of the hard drive from the discs. After the reinstall procedure is done installing the 3rd disc, skip the 4th disc and reboot. This will allow you to have Vista installed with all the proper drivers, minus the drivers for the wireless card. You can download the Vista 64 bit drivers for the wireless card from the sony website. And bam! Your Sony laptop is now fast and furious. If you want other software that came with the laptop, you can browse through the 4th disc and install what you want. Hope this helps.

I bought this laptop from Amazon.com, with their next day shipping for an extra $30. It came the next day, true as advertised.

I really like this laptop, extremely light yet with powerful enough specs for Adobe CS4 programs and Office to run simultaneously efficiently. I think this is a Vista criticism, but Internet Explorer often freezes and has to restart---I don't really care because I downloaded Firefox and Chrome, with no problems. Flash drive downloading breezes through at 4mb/s. I would call battery life "adequate"...somewhere around 2.75 hours with typical use---perhaps a bit less than I would have figured. I typically am able to find an outlet, so not too much of a big deal.

Pros:

Lightweight
Very slim profile
Slightly graduated horizontal profile, which aids in typing
Spacing of the keys is efficient and they are very solid and large for a laptop this size


Cons:
The keys are a bit, well....'squishy'. They make a bit of a squeak on every keystrike. Not a problem, just a very, very minor annoyance.

Bloatware (just an annoyance as well)


All in all, I'm quite please with this laptop.

I was looking for a good laptop for a long time. I was searching every possible site. This is the best deal i ever had over a laptop.

I purchased this notebook computer in December 2008 and from day 1 it had non-stop blue screens of death, crashing frequently. I was unable to get the problem fixed or my money returned to me by Sony. I have now gotten the run-around from Sony since December, and today, someone at Sony actually told me I was wasting my time calling them--that was after 3 different people actually hung up on me! I have had Toshiba notebooks for years that lasted for years. This Sony Vaio appeared reasonably priced, compact, and powerful, but it was too good to be true. I will not even consider non-computer items made by Sony any more!

Slick computer, but the operating system (Vista) is driving me nuts. You have to click through ten or more pop-up windows every time you start the machine or switch users. Sony adds to the insult with a forced survey. So every time you switch user account, you have to close three more windows just to tell Sony that you don't want to do their survey. Sony (and Microsoft) need to understand that this isn't *their* computer - so stop the pop-up nonsense at start-up. (And, no, there's no way to turn it off; best you can do is put it off for one month ... and then the window will be back.)