Laptop substance wrapped with style

The Sony Vaio notebook

On aesthetics alone, the new Sony Vaio S series laptops are the slickest devices I've seen all year, maybe with the exception of the Toshiba Qosmio, which is a wonderfully versatile machine but weighs a ton.

The good old S series has been around for a while, its svelte magnesium alloy case now a classic look for Vaio. It's always cold to the touch, and the matt black finish of the S48 just makes you want to run your hands over the thing.

This revamp boosts the technology across the board to meet the needs of ever-increasing software and multimedia requirements. The price of the S series has also dropped slightly as other laptop makers raise their game.

These Vaios are tough, but they can't be thrown around like an IBM Thinkpad. That's not the idea anyway. If you want a sturdy workhorse to carry with you wherever you go, there are similarly powerful but cheaper laptops on the market.

With the Vaio, you're paying for its looks and design but also for a well-integrated software suite geared to let you edit and store video and digital pictures.

With a built-in rewritable DVD drive, the S48 is great for watching DVDs on its 13.3-inch high-resolution screen (1280x800 native) or for burning content to disc. The laptop is adorned with firewire, USB 2.0 and iLink ports so plugging in digital cameras, video cameras and other peripherals is well catered to. Bluetooth connectivity for communicating with other devices and 802.11g/b for wireless networking is incorporated and can be turned on with the flick of a switch.

If you're worried about the economics of owning a Vaio and a desktop computer, by plugging in a monitor and external keyboard the Vaio S48 can become a competent desktop replacement.

The S48 is powered by an Intel Pentium M 760, 2-gigahertz processor, which is good for a compact laptop (1.95kg). A standard-sized 60-gigabyte hard drive is included with 512 megabytes of memory, expandable to 2GB.

An NVIDIA GeForce 6200 card with 128MB of memory powers the graphics and is enough to power most of the latest games.

Running on Windows XP, the S48 has an impressive media suite, powered by Sony's overlooked SonicStage and Vaio Media applications. You can burn discs, transfer music to portable devices and record music to the hard drive from record players and cassette decks.

A standard version of Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop 3.0 and PictureGear Studio give plenty of scope for editing videos and photos. Norton Internet Security 2005 also comes bundled, making the S48 well stocked with software.

Buying a Vaio is like buying a Mercedes. You're paying a premium for quality and expect some appreciation for doing so. By all accounts, Sony's after-sales service and support for Vaio is pretty good. To get real value out of a sturdy machine like this you'll want to hold onto it for a while and perform regular hardware upgrades. Under that scenario, the economics of owning the S48 may look a little more enticing.

Sony Vaio notebook

Pros: Superb styling; powerful; good software suite.
Cons: Bulky power adapter; no infrared port.
Herald Rating: 8/10
Price: $3700