Sony VAIO F13S0E 16.4 inch Laptop (Intel Core i7 740QM 1.73GHz, 6Gb, 500Gb, Blu-ray/DVDSM, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Win 7 Home Premium)

After seeing mostly positive reviews I ignored the handful of negative ones. Six months on and I really regret it!Build quality: I remember when VAIO had a great reputation in this area... but this is just shoddy!one of the touchpad buttons works only intermittently, and that started after 1 month.The whole case flexes when you pick it up (once I heard some crunching that I HOPE was the fan sticking rather than hard drive plates when I picked it up powered on.After two months the fan started to get louder and louder to the point that now just having the computer switched on sounds like somebody blow drying their hair!I bought this as I do a lot of graphics work (3d and video editing) so push the cpu with rendering, push the gpu with graphics... use the cuda cores for accelerating plugins and filters. Now this computer is a dead weight... it shuts down automatically after about 5 minutes of any kind of intensive use. Totally inappropriate for the purpose. I guess that there's a reason that competitors with a similar spec were nearly twice the price!If I could get my money back right now I certainly would.Customer services at Sony told me the fan noise was normal! It goes in for repair this week. Frankly I'm not sure it'll make any difference as I'm convinced that the case cooling is totally inadequate for the graphics card and cpu...It's a real shame because a few years ago Vaio were great... these new models are just cheap...The only positive is that the screen is nice!

I bought a Sony VAIO F13 ('VPCF13X5E' to be precise) for my son. It is great value and is a pleasure to use, with one HUGE PROBLEM. The fan noise is intollerably LOUD and CONSTANT. To make matters worse, it VARIES its speed up and down every minute or so, making it hard to ignore. I'm not talking about the high piched whine, noted in some forums; just the noise of removing heat from the CPU. It is also not a dust problem, as this happened from the very first time it was used, right out of the box (no packing materials blocking the fan intake either).I have a Thinkpad T510, which also has an i7 CPU, which makes virtually no fan noise whatsoever, so I can only conclude that Sony screwed up somewhere in the design.I have looked on the forums and there are LOTS of people complaining about fan noise from the F series, so as nice as this machine looks and performs, my advice is to think very carefully about whether the fan noise will bother you. Personally, I find it so LOUUD and DISTRACTING, that I cannot even watch TV in the same room while my son is using the Vaio. Even with the TV turned off, how can he possibly concentrate when it comes to doing his homework?Sony's tech support recommend disbling C3/C6 support in the BIOS, but they didn't explain what this means. As far as I can tell from a trawl through the highly technical forums, turning off the C3/C6 support limits processor speed by turning off the over-clocking or turbo-boost feature. Why would you pay for an i7 chip and then reduce its capability. Other solutions in the forums include altering the power profile, but they also reduce processor performance or (worse) allow higher operating temperatures. In short NO SATISFACTORY SOLUTIONS.Sony allow a 30 day cooling off period. That's almost funny. I am seriously considering asking for a refund. However, I need to find out from Sony whether this is a fault with my son's Vaoi or the F series as a whole. Not sure I can get that degree of clarity and honesty from Sony inside 30 days.Anyhow, my recco is DON'T BUY.Please note, I bought this machine directly from Sony's website. My review does not reflect in any way on the re-seller.Hope this helps.

Terrific machine. I have some gripes but no real issues. My gripes won't bother a lot of people but I've come from a series of ThinkPads and these are the things I miss. I list them just to help anyone going through a painful decision-making process:1. No Trackpoint (if you've never had a ThinkPad, you won't care)2. No keyboard light (or illuminated keyboard)3. No fingerprint reader4. No dedicated back/forward keys5. No dedicated volume keys (have to use Fn with F1/F2/F3)6. The Page Up/Down keys are illogically arranged horizontally instead of vertically7. Ditto Home/End keys8. The disk activity light is on the front of the machine, hidden from view9. So far, I prefer the feel of the TP keyboard - less resistance, less springy and less rattly - although the Vaio works well enough.Anything else? Well, the Vaio is 0.6 kg heavier at 3.2 kg than the TP and has shorter battery life. It also makes a lot of fan noise at times - irritating but I can live with it.[Update: With an Acronis data backup running to a USB drive but almost nothing else happening, total CPU is about 40% and it's unpleasantly noisy, producing lots of heat, like a tiny fan heater. It could get pretty intolerable in a quiet room if you had lots of heavy-duty work to do.]The TP offers some interesting options that aren't available on the Vaio, such as integrated mobile BB and integrated smartcard reader. It has 4 memory slots, so you can buy smaller, cheaper chips to make up a given total, and has RAID as standard with the option of adding a second HDD. It has "airbags" for the drives too.So, why did I switch? Price, mainly. I no longer travel on public transport much with my laptop, so build quality wasn't as important. Key requirement was a full HD display (for screen space rather than watching movies).For the same money as a discounted ThinkPad W510, I got a faster processor, more memory, bigger HDD, Blu-ray reader, HDMI, dedicated media keys, superb 16.4" display (good compromise between 15.6" and 17"), and a superior graphics chip. Since my main requirement is for graphics work, these were important.Overall, much as I miss some of the TP features listed above, I have no regrets yet at buying the Vaio.One other thought: The predecessor VPCF12M0E/B is much cheaper and yet appears to be essentially the same (processor, chassis, display, keyboard, etc). It certainly looks the same. The only significant differences seem to be less RAM (4GB vs 6), slower HDD (5400 vs 7200), no USB 3 support and a lower spec graphics chip. It gets great reviews - try Trusted Reviews or Tech Radar.[Update after 7 weeks: Getting used to the idiosyncrasies. Will always wish it had a trackpoint. More importantly, I will always be irritated by the constant fan noise. In fact, because of the noise, I now regret my purchase and have taken a star away - I would not buy again.]