Firtsly, let me say that before you turn away from this beauty, you have to look at it close up and not in a picture. When I saw it, I had to have it there and then, it is THAT beautiful.
It has a sleek silver finish that is lovely to touch, easy to clean and looks virtually scratch resistant.
The keyboard is lovely and is soft-touch, i.e. it takes light tapping of the keys to type. The only disadvantage is that you have to press the 'Fn' or second function key to use the home, page up/down and end keys, which are integrated with the arrow keys. But I quickly got used to this. The keyboard has a windows key in the right place which most modern laptops lack. This is essential for a person who knows the keyboard shortcuts in windows.
As for the operating system, I have Windows 2000 running and it's a dream. Boot up takes about 15 seconds and shutdown is just 2 seconds which is great because as I work on the train so I can wait until I am just outside my stop to shutdown. Note that although this machine comes with both Windows 2000 and WIndows NT, you can only choose one option the first time you start it up, and that will remain your only OS option.
The mouse pad is very responsive and easy to use and the drivers are all easily picked up at install time.
It has five function keys which you can basically program to do almost anything you want it to. The beauty is the two poer buttons. That's right! Two Power buttons. But this is really an excellent feature as one button is for booting and shutting down, while the other completely cuts the power and saves your battery. I guess you could say the second button is like the power switch at wall socket for your PC.
The docking bay is very light and even with it connected, this laptop is still smaller and lighter than most full laptops. The docking bay has the floppy connection (which seems to have it's own sort of connector and not the usual USB), serial port, lpt prot, usb port, screen port, lan port and two PS2 ports. The actual machine without the docking bay has 2 USB ports (one on the side for mouse etc, and one on the back for modem, printer etc), sound ports (mic, speakers, line in), 56k modem, lan port, 1 PCMCIA port, screen port and infra red.
The DVD/CD Rom drive is reliable and fast, and to upgrade it is as simple as unplugging it.
The screen is lovely and although it may sound small, is actually the same screen space (if not slightly larger) than the normal 14 inch desktop monitors. I run mine at 1024 x 768 pixels and the graphics are crisp and colourful.
This is a very well thought out and beautifully designed notebook and definately gives the Vaio a run for it's money. It's great value for money and if you are constantly on the move and have to be booting and shutting down constantly then you will appreciate the light weight and fast response that this machine will give you.
My System Specs
PIII - 800Mhz Mobile Processor 256 Mb RAM 20Gb Hard Drive Choice of Windows 2000 or Win NT External Floppy Disk Drive Small lightweight Docking Bay Onboard Sound 13.3" TFT Screen ATI Rage Graphics Card 56k Onboard Modem Onbaord Lan Infra Red 1 PCMCIA Slot DVD/CD ROM Drive Recovery and Driver Disks Modem attachments for different countries 2 USB Ports 2 PS2 Ports Serial, LPT, Screen ports
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
very helpful by (92%):
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