There is what I would consider a pretty major flaw in the design of this laptop (and I expect others using the same layout).
Firstly, the keyboard is shifted more off center than laptops I have used before, including 2 Toshiba's, an Acer TravelMate and a MacBook (the latter has no numpad so keyboard is center so not really a fair comparison). This means that when I come to use the VAIO I am often 1 key too far to the right when typing, which I find annoying but I never had that issues switching between the laptop and the Acer (which the VAIO replaced recently).
But that isn't the design flaw. I can get used to the shifted keyboard after an hour or two typing till it no longer becomes an issue.
The flaw is because the mousepad is also shifted left to be aligned under the spacebar (as one would expect) so there is no longer enough room to rest ones hand on the laptop while typing without the ball of your thumb coming into contact with the mousepad from time to time.
The consequence of this is an unusable laptop.
What happens is that as your typing your mouse starts moving focus will sometimes change and windows will flip to other ones while your trying to type. Also if like me you often type with your left hand while mousepadding with your right the the cursor with seemingly randomly jump around, or even disappear (jumped to the far right). This is again caused by while mousing with your right hand, the ball of your left hand thumb happens to lightly touch the edge of the mousepad, result mouse cursor is jumping all over the place while your trying to move it or refusing to move at all.
Most of the problems can be alleviated with a setting or two (depending on your success):
First, try enabling the option to to disable the tapping while typing. This does seem to help somewhat, and is clearly a software attempt at resolving this very design flaw, But it isn't a complete cure.
If your still having problems with focus changing or different windows popping into focus, then just turn off tapping and perhaps multi touch gestures all together, and resign yourself to using the mouse buttons (which fortunately this model has).
However neither of those solutions solve the mouse jumping around while using the mousepad with right hand, and typing with the left. Something I do a lot as a software developer, and it is a daily annoyance.
