Sony VAIO VGN-NW11S/S

I bought one of these on Saturday for my son's forthcoming 18th. His is the 'tan' coloured version, which I thought would look a bit odd, but I have to say it's more of a bronze colour and looks really very smart. It works very well, but we haven't managed to get the rapid internet access to work at all. I paid £615 inc VAT for it from Tronix Computers (http://www.tronixcomputers.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=nw11), though it was at a computer fair so I paid a lot less than indicated on their web site. It's worth mentioning I think that it currently comes with a free upgrade to Windows 7 under the Vaio rollout programme, for which you have to register. Angles of view are perfectly OK - who buys a 15.5" laptop for viewing from the side? personally, I'd rather the guy next to me can't see what I am working on on the train! You don't get the option to install Vista 64bit, so I guess you can't use all the Ram unless things change under Windows 7 (I don't think they will). The main thing though is that my son is delighted with it - quality is hugely better than his old Acer, and although it may not play the very latest games at top settings, it is hugely capable. I too would have liked to see an eSATA port, but USB2 is perfectly good for most things. Very happy bunny!

I've just purchased the VAIO VGN-NW11S/S, partly on the strength of this review. It's pretty good generally, but there are a couple of annoyances.

The first annoyance is the location of the USB ports. The two on the right-hand side are placed next to where any right-handed person would naturally use their mouse. With USB cabling attached to one or both of these ports, you have to operate the mouse some distance away from the computer itself, which is very awkward if space is limited. The situation is no better on the left-handers, as the single USB port provided there is in the equivalent position. Surely, these would be better placed towards the top of the sides or at the back, where they're less likely to get in the way.

The second annoyance is that neither of the two right-side USB ports appear to provide sufficient bus power for the external hard drive I want to use with it. Curiously, the left-sided port does provide enough power. There's no mention of the specification being different in the manual, however.

Agree with the above!

Just bought the Vaio two weeks ago and love the silky smoothness of it, but I do miss my 4 USB ports on one side of my old laptop.

Another annoyance is the inconsistency in the volume levels for the chassy speakers. One music track played through WMPlayer can be heard across the room, but a DVD is virtually inaudible if a kettle is running on the back-ground. Could be a tweak in my settings, but havent discovered a workaround just yet.

will be installing Win7 later this week, so hopefully no other hiccups shall arise (fingers crossed)