The Sony is attractive, fast, and easy to set up. I especially like the fact that Sony makes it easy (through the Control Panel) to remove any pre-installed software you don't want.

Btw, I discovered this through my one and only call to Sony for support, which I did via a chat session on their website. The rep was knowledgeable, courteous, and fast -- so, that experience alone earns an extra star, in my book.

I bought this to replace an HP dm1z. The keyboard is better on the Sony, and the function keys make more sense. Speed is roughly the same between the two. The HP has a bit better battery life, I think, but the Sony weighs a little less.

And, I had *lousy* experience with HP support -- like, it was non-existent. That's the main reason I gave up on that laptop.

First of all, it's light and small.It's just large enough to be comfortable to type on.

I'm a big fan of AMD, a company local to me where several of friends work, but I admit their chips are not at quite at level Intel's are for raw performance.This is not the most powerful laptop, but it is snappy for web surfing and decodes h.264 basically instantly.For Netflix, web surfing, document editing, and other every day uses, this laptop is up to the task.

For games, I found the framerates surprisingly pretty good for Dead Space, but it struggled with La Noire.Skyrim on medium settings was playable.

Battery life is excellent.It's been on for five hours now.

Keyboards are a matter of personal taste.I prefer the old Thinkpad keyboards, but this island style is more attractive and has a nice feel.I can type around 80% as fast on this laptop as I can on my desktop.

There isn't too much bloatware installed... Sony is better about this than most, but I removed the Office trial, Kapersky, and Windows "Essentials".It didn't make much difference in performance.

The screen is small but gorgeous; the fit and finish is as good as any laptop I've ever had.I glanced at how to disassemble it and it plainly would be an enormous pain, like most laptops these days.

There is no optical drive.No blu ray, no DVD, no CD.If you have access to a computer with such a drive, you can easily make isos and mount them for use on this computer, but I download everything these days.I think a laptop is better without the extra parts.

I strongly advise replacing the hard drive in this laptop with an SSD.The boot times and program loading with this setup are incredibly fast.This makes a bigger difference to most users than a more powerful processor would.

This is an outstanding laptop at a reasonable price.I paired it with Case Logic QNS-111 11.6-Inch EVA Molded Netbook Sleeve (Black), which fits the laptop well and provides a lot of protection.