I own two relatively new vaio laptops, an S3XP and a A497XP.
Aside from an issue with the screen which has been slow in being repaired ive been very happy with the smaller S3XP, its well designed and comfortable to use despite its compact form. It also has a nicely laid out and well balanced keyboard which suits my purposes as a programmer well.
The same unfortunately can not be said of the A497XP. Though much larger and much more expensive for some reason SONY has cripled this laptop with a terrible keyboard layout. There is ample room for a full sized keyboard with numpad, but instead of taking advantage of this space they have somehow made it much worse than the much smaller S3XP.
The main problem is one of ergonomics. The A497XP is equipped with a full sized set of arrow keys, but rather than shrink them to fit under the right shift key as on the S3XP, or use the extra space to put them to the right and below the normal keys, the designers stupidly decided that it was better to cut the right shift key in half, and fit the arrow keys directly underneath the return.
What this was meant to achieve i have no idea, but what it means is that there is a gap to the right of the return key and above the right arrow key which has been filled with a vertical collection of home, page up, page down, and end keys. Since all of these keys are still accessible using the function and arrow keys as on the S3XP, this seems more like and after thought than a justification for the poor placement of the arrow keys and the destruction of the right shift key.
What you end up with anyway, is a large keyboard which is horribly off centre (about a centimetre to the left of where you think it should be) and without a functional right shift key. It makes a very expensive laptop almost unusable.
I don't know what the designers were thinking, but working on an off centre keyboard with half a shift key is impossible and i type as many incorrect keys as i do correct ones. Ive never once used the vertical layout of keys next to the return key, and in fact they just add to the frustration becuase i frequently hit page up or down when im going for the return key (since the keyboard is so off centre).
In fact im writing this now on my S3XP becuase i can't stand typing large amounts of text on the A497XP keyboard. In fact worse still, in my line of work as a programmer i rely heavily on the right shift key for braces, parenthesis, vertical bars, and angle brackets.
What a shame SONY din't give the most critical part of the design of this laptop any thought....
