Available in a choice of white, brown, or silver, Sony's Vaio NR has some stylish design touches but offers an entry level price and specs.

Sony ismaking some serious forays into the mid to lower consumer pricerange with its laptops. Its latest addition to this mix-the VAIONR-is genuine value in the $700s to $800s range. For your JoeSoap notebook consumer-say, a college kid, a recent graduate, orsome other member of the "Millennial" generation-the VAIO NR'stop feature could be its customizability.

We don't refer here tothe amount of RAM you can load into the NR's 6.2 pound chassis,or your choice of graphics processor. No, we're talking colors.And not to denigrate your basic laptop buyer, but the ability tobuy one's own chassis color and personalize a product reallycould top lists here. In the case of the VAIO NR, users can pick from white, brown, or silver. Andthough the chassis is made from plastic and not some light, slickmetal, reports have this VAIO looking good (and well puttogether) nonetheless.

Not to say that you can't customize other features of this. You have your choice of Intel processors, from thesemi-antiquated 1.46 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T2310 to the1.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5450. You can pack in as much as 4GBof RAM as well.

The choices at this price level, though, stop there. The VAIO NRcomes with a 15.4-inch display and that's it. (It comes withXBRITE-ECO glossy finish, still, so it's not a bad thing.) Thegraphics chip is an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100-noAlienware gamer's delight is the VAIO NR. And you get WindowsVista operating system with all its accompanying software thatyou'll either have to ignore or delete yourself. Unlike Asus'snew , alinux operating system is not a starting option.

One other downside note as well, NotebookReview reports have the NR supposedly having some designflaws, such as a battery that wiggles inside the chassis evenwhen locked in, and an AV mode switch (that would allow you to usea media player without booting Windows) that failed to work.

Sure, you can order your VAIO laptop in brown to match yourleather handbag. But those issues are worth considering aswell.