Now this is a bit more like it. With a nice healthy 2GB of RAM this makes toast of handling Windows XP.
At 1.9kg this is noticeably the lightest machine I've owned although it can still feel heavy after carrying it around for a couple of hours.
Originally it had Vista Premium installed which looked real purty, but didn't really bring anything of real value to the table. I do a lot of disk diving, so in the end, driven mad by the apalling Windows Explorer replacement, I upgraded to Windows XP.
Video out to a 60" TV gives good resolution but is prone to some minor but definite tearing
The onboard NVIDIA GeForce 7400 is very impresive and more powerful than my desktop. However, there is some tearing on higher spec games, but Darwinia played fine while my desktop simply couldn't cope.
I've happily playing the games from the Orange Box (Portal, Half-Life 2, etc.) with no noticable problems.
The touchpad continues to be flakey, this may be due to intermittent connection or a sticky left "mouse" button. In any case, I've been using a small mouse which I've found more responsive and accurate than a touchpad, although this becomes problematic when there is no table to rest on.
It has only two USB ports but this has never been an inconvenience, even though one is usually taken up by a mouse. I've attached a pen drive, camera and PSP all without problems.
The Vaio has enough power options to make your eyes water plus a Stamina/Speed switch to control which video card is being used for extra life.
Battery life is generally quite impressive, watched films on EuroStar to Paris, so even when constantly using the hard drive. the battery easily managed with 15 minutes to spare (I've found the battery warning indicator to be quite conservative).
In more normal use in stamina mode it manages an impressive 4 hours or so.
Even in speed mode I routinely get over 2 hours of use.
I recently bought a second SONY branded battery so I should be able to indulge in high quality graphics for extended periods.
Maybe it's the poseur factor, but I'm enjoying the Vaio in daily use, both on my daily commute and at home on the setee. It's light and convenient with a bright screen and comfortable keyboard, and the batteries last well.
The only problem at the moment is that XP is not currently recognising both cores. When I get a chance I intend to address this issue, attempts to fix it so far have been quite disastrous.