Sony Vaio S15 Spring 2012 edition

Hello,

I'm in the market for a new machine and I was looking at the Vaio S15. I talked to a Sony representative and he said that this model (which is in the outlet BTW) is from Spring 2011. He also said that the vents are on the side and not on the back of the machine and that he never heard of a customer complaining about fan issues.
Does anyone have this model from 2011 or has a friend who owns it and can confirm what the rep. said above? In particular about the fan issues. Also, all the pictures I've seen on the web show the S15 with the vents on the back.

 

The spring 2013 (3632QN refresh, not sure if that is spring 2013 really..) have vents on the back - and I personally dislike it. It does not seem bad one bit, in any regard, I am just afraid that will not remove heat well enough, since the monitor blocks the exhaust path when it is opened.

But looking at the dissembly for SVS15 from 2012, which means it is a summer or late spring 2012 refresh line, I see the vent is also on the back.

BTW, spring 2011 version is quite unlikely to be what they have in the outlet! That is the pre-Sandy Bridge build I think, so that would be the SA/SB/SC/SE, not the SVS15.

 

The model number is SVS1511Cxxxx. It's weird that the rep told me the vents are on the side. Also, I mentioned fan problems and he said that they had no such problems. Again, weird and totally opposed to what I've read online. That's what keeps me from buying this.
There's also a deal on Dell Inspiron 15R SE with the exact same specs and double the RAM (8G) for 80 euro's less. The Sony has the advantage of being way less bulky though.

What do you think?

 

The Dell's GPU is slightly better than the Sony's (unless you overclock it, in which case the Vaio is much better). The Dell also has much better speakers. The Sony however is much more compact and weighs almost 30% less.

And that rep has no clue what he's talking about. The "vent" on the side is the air intake, not the exhaust. The exhaust is on the back between the display hinges, like a Macbook Pro. The current model was released in Spring 2012. The 2011 model was quite different. I don't know what "fan issues" you're referring to, though.

 

Thanks for the reply! I'm referring to the fan being very loud on high load and also this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/675249-noisy-vaio-s15.html

 

i have a svs1513c5e and my fan is ok, it's louder only when is set "prior to ventilation" o "performance" in vaio control center, in standard o low energy use is very quite.

 

It's true that it gets loud on high load... but that's the price to pay for good cooling. You can't have a laptop that's thin, powerful, and has good cooling.