Sony Vaio S380

[pantingdeer]

I've been shopping around for a laptop that has a spec as shortly described below:

* Processor: 2GHz Centrino
* FBS: 533MHz
* Chipset: 915
* Memory: 1GB x1 (I looked for a dual-channelled momory, but it seems dell xp gen something is the only laptop that has a dual-channel momry chip and the laptop is too big and loses its points in portability)

* HDD: more than 80GB

Now I've tentatively chosen to buy Sony Vaio S380, a customized laptop and it came out to be $3,000 before tax and shipping. It is very expensive but as I shopped around more, I found a laptop with those spec usually costs more than $2,500. Although I understand that Sony Vaio costs more that it should for its spec, since I really like the look of it and the size, I'm inclined to make a decision to buy it.

However, I've heard that this laptop has some issues which I want to make sure with experts' help before I do anything stupid. Issues that I heard of on this item are:

* Noisy fan (ununiform rpm tends to be annoying although noise level is relatively low)
* overheating fan (the bottom right corner where the fan is gets hot)
* backup or OS replacement trouble (I heard Vaio laptops require "OS for Vaio" to be used. Also there's an issue with backing up the system and the softwares that come with the laptop)

Those are my questions. Please can someone help me on this? and also let me know if there are more issues with this laptop?

Thank you very mcuh.

 

[oog]

i have a different vaio (v505dc2) and i do find that the fan is noisy and uneven sometimes. not all the time -- i don't quite know when it starts to cycle. i had some initial trouble with reinstalling the OS. the laptop came with a restore partition that contains drivers, utilities (including a critical "hotkey" utility that is required to use any of the hotkeys for doing things like switching between the lcd and an external display), and bundled apps. if you create the recovery cds from this partition, you can safely blow it away. i didn't do that step, and it made it much harder for me to get my laptop in working order because these things were not available for download on the sony site.