Mobile 14 inch or ultrabook
At least 6 Gigs of RAM for multi-tasking
Backlit keyboard
SSD/HD hybird for quick start ups
At least 4 hours of batter life
Good speakers/video capability
I preferred an optical drive for handling a large collection of old CDs.
Windows 7
Under $700.

Pros: Mobility requitement are solid. A little heavier than I thought. The battery life for me has been around 4-5 hours.The size is a good compromise with an optical drive.
Backlit keyboard is excellent and provides a great typing experience.
Performance is solid, with 8 Gigs of RAM. It handles numerous business applications simultaneously. I don't game so I don't know....
Trackpad: I think it works great. I have read a number of reviews complaining. I not only find it effective...I think it is accurate and the advanced scrolling features are very helpful.
All of the peripherals work well. Bluetooth USD 3.0 drive, etc. Lots of bells and whistles for the dollars spent.
Rapid wake works well when the machine is sleeping.

Neutral: Webcam is adequate
Speakers are adequate. They are fairly loud, but the sound quality is meh.Not sure what the XLoud thing really does...Fit is solid. Case seems just a little flimsy. The back cover picks up fingerprints easily.
You give up a number pad with the 14 inch profile. This is occasionally an impediment with Excel, but not a huge deal for me. A 15.6 ultrabook with similar specs would be a better choice if your need that....There is a decent Toshiba ultrabook for the same price point with many of the same features with this feature. I needed an optical drive worse.
I haven't used the built in software from SONY much. It appears to be solid....but I can't give it a rating.

Cons:
The lack of a SSD leaves you with a pretty standard start up time from a cold reboot. Not horrible. Not a big deal. But Ultrabooks in the price range of 600-700 are available with this feature. I sacrificed this for the other features. Not a huge deal but if that is what you are looking for...this machine will not work for you.
This is a minor gripe but the condensed keyboard has the home and end buttons only usable as a function key. That is kind of annoying.

This is a solid machine. Specs are good. It will blaze through business applications. The keyboard is great. With the minor gripes I mention this is a great value.

It is super portable. I did not want a larger laptop, because I have to carry it around all the time.
The screen has a widescreen effect so it creates the illusion of a larger screen. I don't feel much difference from a 15.6" screen when I use this.

It is very powerful. I can run many programs at once when I'm doing my research. It was always a problem on my old computer, but this one handles everything nicely and doesn't even get warm. This was one of my other requirements. I needed the laptop that doesn't get hot, because for me it is really annoying.

The screen is glossy. Would have preferred matte, but it is OK if used indoors. In general, glossy screens are more precise, but matte screens are more versatile and look better (IMO). Anyway, the screen is very bright, the colors look great.

This laptop comes with Windows 7, it does NOT come with Office (I believe none of the new computers do), and it has some Sony software, like Soundforge and Vegas. Not sure if I will ever use them, but keeping for now. It also has an "app center" type of thing on top of the screen - you know, the same kind that Mac's have on the bottom. So far I haven't used it, but it looks interesting.

The speakers are average, but pretty loud. You may want to invest in good speakers if that's really important for you. For me, they are fine.

I have not played games on this one. I am not a gamer, so I would not be able to tell you anything about that, but based on the overall performance, I think it would handle most games. Don't quote me on that, though.

It does have the optical drive, which was also very important for me. There are 3 USB ports side by side on the right side of the laptop, next to the optical drive. Probably not the best design, but I'll live with that. Fan exhaust is on the left, along with the power adapter, speaker/mic, and another USB port. There is also a LAN port, port for connecting a projector, and HDMI port. On front, it has SD slot and a similar slot called PRO Duo [I'm not sure what it does].

The keyboard is pretty decent. It's backlit and it's also pretty quiet when I type, which I like.
The touch pad is a little weird. it does not have separate left and right mouse buttons, but if you click in a specific place it will do a left click or right click for you. Of course, you can left click by just tapping on it also. Right click is sometimes kind of tricky, but it's not bad enough that I have to get a mouse. I have used laptops all my life and have never had to use a mouse with them. So I guess I will adjust to this new touch pad.

Amazing battery life. With average use, it lasts 6 hours. In power saver mode, it showed 8 hours at 87% battery today. I'm not sure how accurate that would be, but I can certainly attest that 6 hours is not an exaggeration. I never have to take power adapter with me again when I'm at work/in classes.

I recommend buying a sleeve for this one because it doesn't look like it would be able to handle much stress.
Will be glad to answer additional questions.

The overall look would have been cutting-edge ten years ago. Nowadays, it looks a little fussy.But I don't buy 'em for looks.

The laptop comes with some sort of Sony front-end to make it 'easier'.Besides the fact that the driver for the onboard disk didn't work (found a good one online), I find these front ends to interfere with the experienced user.Yes I'm a Mac-head, but I've been running Windows for decades.I was a joy to get rid of all the Sony junk and get down to basic Windows.It would be awfully nice if they added a button to blow that stuff away.

The reason I selected this unit was the package.I deal with a lot of audio and video, and the bundle would have cost the price of the computer if I bought it separately.Acid and Soundforge were the attractions.It doesn't hurt to have Vegas either.

Summation:It's a laptop.Meh.If you're a musician, it's a strong contender because of the software bundle.If you're not a musician, it's another laptop.