Sony VAIO NR160

[ Music ] ^M00:00:01 >> I'm Dan Ackerman, senior editor at CNET.com and this is the Sony VAIO NR160. This is part of the new VAIO and our series, which is Sony's first attempt at a budget laptop line. This is certainly a perfectly functional, low-priced 15 inch laptop; we just wish that Sony had not sacrificed so much of the cool industrial design that makes us like the more expensive VAIO?s that much more. The NR160 shares a lot of design cues with the other Sony VAIO systems, but it's covered in this textured plastic that looks okay from a distance, but get up closer, it gets dirty kind of easily and it feels a little cheap underneath your fingers, is actually the same material on the back of the lid too. For under a thousand dollars, you do get a fairly powerful dual core processor and all the components you'd expect to find. But as is typical for VAIO's, they kind of weigh the whole thing down with all that adware and bloatware. See the Spiderman three ad here, you got these little launcher buttons that launch these ads that want you to buy all this software, you get all this trial ware, stuff cluttering up your system. You want to go through and remove all this stuff and your system is actually going to run a little bit faster. A couple things we've gotten used to seeing, like 802.11NWiFi and Bluetooth are missing here. And there is actually no S video out either, not that we know anyone who uses that, but you do get the typically cool, flat-keyed Sony keyboard, which we always like a lot. And the display is up to Sony's high standards. I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the Sony VAIO NR160. ^M00:01:28 [ Music ]