On the top panel, above the keyboard, you can see a row of buttons and indicators: a rectangular Power On/Off button (with soft green highlighting), Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock indicators, and two quick-launch buttons (they disable the sound and switch to the external monitor by default, but you can reprogram them on the S Button tab of the Sony Notebook Setup utility to launch any application you want).

The two stereo speakers located near the display hinges are sufficiently loud and give your OS and applications a powerful and clear voice.

The indicators of the status of the system are on the right of the front panel, so you can see them regardless of the position of the lid. The indicators are made as highlighted symbols. They include:

• Power indicator (green when the notebook is powered up);
• Battery charge indicator (shows the status of the battery in orange);
• HDD activity indicator;
• Optical drive activity indicator;
• Card-reader activity indicator;
• WLAN indicator (green when you’re on a wireless network).

Next to the indicators there is a wireless on/off slider which enables/disables the WLAN interface.

The keyboard of the Sony VAIO VGN-S2HRP is made of opaque black plastic; the letters are painted with white – they are rather hard to read in a dim room. The functional keys are marked out with blue (press and hold [Fn] to use them). The keyboard layout is typical for a notebook: the Del, Ins, Print Scrn and Num Lk keys are in the top row, next to the functional keys. A numeric pad and two Windows buttons are available. The cursor keys are separate from the keyboard’s mainland and have a smaller size; the arrow keys are combined with the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys (available as you press and hold [Fn]). This keyboard is overall handy, comfortable and functional.

The touchpad has the color and texture of the top of the case, with the touch-sensitive area being a bit sunken down. The touchpad comes with two buttons (with a rather quick response) instead of the mouse’s left and right buttons. Unfortunately, there is no additional button or joystick for scrolling text, which would be a very handy feature.

An optical drive, a card-reader (supports MS and MS Pro formats), the above-described indicators of the system status, and vent holes are found on the front panel of the notebook.