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Sony has always had a knack for designing good looking notebooks and, whether it’s an ultra-portable or a desktop replacement, it delivers on a regular basis. The C-series of VAIO notebooks is another example of Sony’s good design ethic, and today we're looking at the VGN-C2SL; an update to the C-series that is available in five different colours.

Our test sample came in an attractive sky blue - or “Rediscovery” blue as Sony likes it to be known - with the four other finishes being “Karma” white, “Natura” green, “Free Spirit” pink and “Timeless” black. Sony is certainly pushing the individuality angle here, with each colour intended to appeal to those who want to make a statement with their notebook. Many suggest colour preference is an indicator of personality, and even if you don’t believe this it’s still nice to have a choice.

For what it's worth the C-series certainly achieves its basic goal: being distinctive. We've got quite a number of notebooks in the office at the moment, and when sat next to others the C2SL certainly cuts a striking figure. The combination of the coloured outer casing and the shiny silver VAIO logo are immediately inviting; making it a great notebook for wowing friends. Dare I say the wow starts now?

As hinted at earlier this is an update to the C-series range – though the changes are in fact relatively minor with a small increase in hard disk capacity and a small upgrade of Intel's integrated graphics chip being the only notable hardware changes.

The upgraded graphics are a result of the installation of Windows Vista, with more power required to run the Aero interface effects that help Vista look considerably more polished when compared to XP. Otherwise everything is very much the same, and for the price the C2SL is reasonably well specified.

At the centre of it all is a Core 2 Duo T5500 running at 1.66GHz, and this is supported by 1GB of DDR2 system memory and integrated Intel 945GM Express graphics with 64MB onboard memory.

The onboard graphics memory is supplemented by sharing system memory, with a potential 224MB available for graphics processing. In a normal desktop environment graphics memory usage is in the region of 76MB, with a small amount of memory automatically shared for its operation.

Sony does also produce a slightly more powerful, and more expensive, version of the C-series that features an nVidia Go 7400 which will provide a little bit of gaming performance should you really want it.

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