VAIO, how do you pronounce it? (Sony Vaio FS515E)

Member Name: steve00

Product:	Sony Vaio FS515E
Date:	11/11/06 (469 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good looks, good price, nice screen.

Disadvantages: Processing and graphics speed.

I got my VAIO laptop for around £550. After searching the internet at the time for it I found it was the best laptop I could find for its price. It came pre-installed with XP Home and a neat software bundle including Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere, both of which I have found very useful.

Looks wise, I think it looks great. Its very thin compared to other laptops especially the screen and therefore it makes itself very easy to transport around. It has a nice contrast of the colours black and grey and overall I think its looks are top notch.

Computing wise its power isn't great with an Intel Celeron M processor which aren't renound for their speed and its quite lacking with graphics power. Using on-board graphics mine can play basic games such as Theme Hospital and Age of Empires II but struggles heavily with nearly anything above this. Im quite happy with the HDD which has an 80GB capacity, which is defaultly split into 2 partitions. This is about 20GB more than most laptops of this price range. 512MB of memory is also pretty good, you have the option to add more but I wouldn't bother. Its optical drive is great, it comes with a dual layer DVD-RW which is better than my PC, I was quite surprised. This however is a little flimsy when it is ejected and I think im going to break it most of the time. The screen definitely has to be the best feature coming with a 15.4" X-black LCD. I find the quality of this to be excellent, supporting a resolution of up to 1280*1024. Other basic features include:

* 3.5mm headphone and microphone inputs.
* A sony memory stick reader (handy if you have a sony digital camera)
* A built in wireless LAN card.
* a PCMIA slot.
* 3 USB2 ports
* A single VGA monitor port,.
* Modem port.
* Built in network card with 1 ethernet port.
* 2 shortcut kets which can be programmed to do pretty much anything with the provided software.

When I first got it, it was pre-installed with everything you need to run it. The instruction manual wasn't really that helpful though to be honest, as most of the guides are pre-built onto the computer. These howver, are very detailed and provide FAQ answers etc.

Overall I would reccomend this to potential buyers if you have around £600 to spend on a laptop. If you have more then look elsewhere. :)

Summary: Overall top of the range laptop if you have around £600 to spend.

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