Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony VAIO VGN-NR280E/S 15.4-inch Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium) Granite

The VAIO NR220E/S is not a bad computer at all for a budget laptop. It has excellent features. There is a lot of bloatware. But what computer doesn't come with that? Windows has a neat little feature called "Add/Remove Programs." It is a must to upgrade to 2 Gb of Ram, though. Vista is a memory hog but in return, you get a neat OS. The sidebar is a handy feature and it's great that Vista has so many security features built in. I've noticed people writing about some of the networking/LAN issues and the issue, in my experience, seems to be SONY's network managing software. Once you know what's going on, it's easy enough to deal with any issues. Of course, the Smart Network software can be uninstalled itself, and that would likely remedy anything for good. It sure isn't a big enough concern for me to give this computer anything other than a stellar rating for a basic, budget laptop. It's sleek and feels much more high-end than it is.

Before writing a review, It is very important to keep in mind how much are you paying for a Laptop and your expectations should be based on that fact. I bought mine for $599 and I wasn't expecting the fastest or the lightest laptop in the market, I was expecting a Laptop with the essentials for my everyday needs. This Laptop by far exceeded my expectations, The display is amazing, movies and pictures look great in this computer. The overall performance is decent, I strongly recommend to increase the RAM to 2 Gb, this will make the windows vista to run faster and will make a drastic improvement in performance.
The case of this notebook is solid and scratch resistant, this baby weights around 6 pounds and is not difficult to carry around. The battery last approximately 2.45 hrs depending on the application audio and video will demand more power.
The Wi-Fi works smooth and with very good range, at the Kennedy airport I had better signal strength that other more expensive laptops. The DVD burner works pretty good also, I can burn a full DVD in less than 3 minutes.
The feature that I like most from this computer is its beauty, this is a laptop that will turn heads and eyes over you and everyone would think that you have paid a lot more money.
Bottom line, If you are looking for a great Value and for you the looks are important this is an excellent choice, however if you expect a $600 laptop to perform like a $2,000 buy something else.

I bought this at Best Buy for my 14 yr old. It was on sale for $349 as a closeout, marked down from $499. The only model they had was the floor model so they took even more off. I paid a total of $384 for this notebook, a neoprene bag and tax.

I am upgrading the memory to 2 gig and am also looking into downgrading to xp. I will see how it runs with more memory.

Yes it is slow, but removing all the bloatware helps quite a bit. This is a perfect entry level computer for a student to browse the internet and do homework and I couldn't pass it up at the price.

I do dislike vista. My oldest has it on his desktop and it runs like a rabbit, but this is on a supercharged gaming machine.

Vista does not run on anything less than 2GB of ram. I have now used / seen 3 laptops with less than 2 GB and they were almost unusable. Even with 2GB of Ram, the laptops are slow.

So just right from the start I can tell you that this laptop is not worth the price. For $900 you can get a laptop with twice as good specs from dell. The couple of good things about this laptop that I will say are that the screen is amazing (videos look extremely good), and the exterior and keyboard are awesome. Now here are the numerous bad things I have to say...
First off when I bought the laptop the listing said it came with a webcam and mic which I found out wasn't true. I decided to keep it anyway and it held up well for about 4 months until the power socket broke and I couldn't charge it. Sony made me pay $100 claiming that it was my fault that the computer was broken. The usb plugs and cd rom have also given me a lot of trouble along with a clicking sound that Sony was supposed to fix when I sent it back in. Lastly and most importantly the battery is TERRIBLE!!! If you are watching a movie it literally will only last about 45 minutes MAX! Also it sort of overheats occasionally and i have to flip it over to let it cool. Overall I don't recommend this laptop to anyone unless you just want the "Sony" name.