By Stephanie Gwee, a freelance writer

DON'T say I didn't warn you: whip this baby out of your bag and you'll be picking up dropped jaws off the floor.

It's a head-turner for sure - skinny body slathered with a jet-black chassis. (Pardon me while I wipe away my drool.)

No worries about scratches and dents marring it either - the lid of the notebook is completely scratch-proof. Butter-fingers, breathe a sigh of relief.

At a mere 1.9kg, this baby is light enough to be toted in a handbag. Even better, its easily removable batterysheds some pounds off this gizmo.

As soon as you open it up and power it on, you will come face to face with one of the SR's most impressive features - its glorious 13.3-inch screen.

The screen was ultra bright and gleamed crystal-clear images - good for photophiles who want to flaunt the shots they've taken, underscoring their photography skills.

So clear was the display that the contents on the screen were visible even when I looked at it from an angle.

Inside the slim chassis sits the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, running at a speedy 2.26GHz with up to 4GB of RAM. This lets the baby churn out presentation slides and fire up the Web at lightning fast speeds.

Even when I was running several websites and applications (think PowerPoint, Word documents, iTunes) at the same time, there was hardly any lag.

Even better - there are five physical Quick Switch buttons placed just below the screen. You can assign shortcuts to these buttons, powering up your frequently used applications with one button.

One thing that appealed to me was the well-spaced keyboard. The broad, fat keys made it really comfortable for me to hammer out reports.

Its isolated keys - reminiscent of Apple's MacBook Pro - is also a dream for the female folk. It ensures that your freshly manicured nails won't get stuck in between keys.

Too bad though that the notebook's media offerings rained on its parade.

Video footage, for instance, looked slightly grainy and blurred and it did not have a Blu-ray drive option for users who want to watch Blu-ray films. The gizmo's built-in speakers were also too soft for my liking. Even when I blasted the sample tracks at the maximum volume, I could barely hear a thing.

Its saving grace was its nifty Vaio music applications. The Vaio Music Box function customised a music playlist based on my mood. For instance, when I selected the Rainy Day theme, the laptop selected tracks with a slower tempo. Very intuitive.

FINAL SAY

Sony is definitely trying to prove that its new line of laptops boast both drop-dead gorgeous looks and equally impressive grey matter. With the Vaio SR series, I'm sold.

This article was first published in Digital Life, The Straits Times on Oct 8, 2008.