Why can't we find ANY info on this Sony Vaio Laptop PCG-71511L?

[Voixdelion]

My honey bought me a present, a lovely 17 inch vaio laptop (from the pawn shop he visits with some regularity for toys and tools for $400 in great shape) and it it is quite nice, but I am curious because a google search of the model number turns up nothing but parts and maybe two ebay listings from last year.  It was manufactured in OCT 2010, has an Athlon dual core CPU and a gorgeous 17 inch display - one of the nicest I have seen on any laptop.   But I am REALLY puzzled as to why I can't find ANY consumer-type info like reviews/ratings or manuals for download.  The only thing that comes up in a search is replacement parts.  The SONY website doesn't even return anything at all, even under the discontinued products.  


Why would this be?  Could it have been a particular model made for some in-house purpose and not for retail sale at all?  I've never had such an experience of lack of information regarding a product like this.  I can search my pcvrx560 from 2001 and get more info...  Did we stumble onto some wierd military machine or something?  Its weird...

[Wildcard]

Does seem odd. I can't find a base PCG-715 model as well. Have you tried having Sony automatically detect your model number from their website? On the support page here, click on "VAIO Detect My Computer" below the model search.

[Internetlad]

I went straight to http://www.sony.com/support, clicked on "drivers and devices" and cut and pasted the model number PCG-71511L and it came up with

http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/model-find.pl?mdl=%20PCG-71511L&PRODTYPE=32,33,63,71,7,102,26,80,72,44,55,27,74,84,57,61,108,115,109,103,89,10,113,35,78,48,77,106,29,50,39,64,114,12,41,58,52,81,60,45,66,73,101,76,86,62,54,67,70,68,2,17,1,88,116,100,82,110,25,28,83,59,69,112,49,24,104,53,79,22,42,46,13,105,6,85,3,36,9,51,111,47,38,4,34,37,43,5

Everything about it seems perfectly straightforward, what you'd expect from a consumer device. It is odd that a google search didn't turn up any reviews but it doesn't appear to be because the machine is proprietary in any way.

Maybe just a rare model, I suppose.

[Wildcard]

Not sure if this is what the owner of the laptop experienced, but when I use your link or do a search for PCG-71511L the results I get are these model numbers:

VPCEF44X
VPCEF44FXBI

Neither of these two models returned appears to be the PCG-71511L notebook mentioned in the OP. And I'm thinking when Voixdelion said there were no results on Sony's support website, it was another way of saying no results that matched. Again, not my notebook, so I have no idea I'm just guessing at this point.

Best bet still is to run the "VAIO Detect My Computer" option and see what comes back. Perhaps this is a Non-US model which is why it doesn't come up on the US site?

[Internetlad]

I guess without being able to see the laptop, I couldn't say. I don't deal with sony laptops too often so I don't know if they have a strange proprietary model number system or what. Tracking down mystery machines usually isn't worth it.

I did get one hit on ebay too, was going for 600 bucks BIN used. wasn't much info on it.

Perhaps this is a Non-US model which is why it doesn't come up on the US site?

Good thinking. That's very plausible, and i've had that happen in the past with some systems.