Sony Vaio VGN-FE41Z

...a top of the range Sony only Sony could provide a laptop that could come close. Just over two months ago I went on the search for what I needed and after hunting through various websites, electrical stores and specialist computer shops I came up with the Sony VAIO FE41Z, an amazingly powerful machine which I have found so far to be almost as capable as my desktop and believe me it has been put through its paces.

As I also work from ...
...quite badly, this new Sony however breezes through it as easy as any desktop I have used.

My Sony vaio has a 15.4 inch widescreen, perfectly big enough to give a clear view of what I am up to and also enough room to have a few windows opened on the screen at the same time. The screen is equally big enough to catch a movie on if I find the time or to simply watch clips I am loading to websites. Another of its attributes is the huge ... more

Due to the fact that I run and build websites and the fact that I am somewhat addicted to the internet in general, I need to have a laptop that can do everything my desktop is capable of and as my desktop is a top of the range Sony only Sony could provide a laptop that could come close. Just over two months ago I went on the search for what I needed and after hunting through various websites, electrical stores and specialist computer shops I came up with the Sony VAIO FE41Z, an amazingly powerful machine which I have found so far to be almost as capable as my desktop and believe me it has been put through its paces.

As I also work from home mostly online, being stuck in my computer chair can get a bit tedious so it's nice now to be able to lounge about on the sofa taking care of my business. The type of work I do involves a lot of uploading and downloading huge files and my previous laptop both through the internet connection and through the lack of power tended to struggle quite badly, this new Sony however breezes through it as easy as any desktop I have used.

My Sony vaio has a 15.4 inch widescreen, perfectly big enough to give a clear view of what I am up to and also enough room to have a few windows opened on the screen at the same time. The screen is equally big enough to catch a movie on if I find the time or to simply watch clips I am loading to websites. Another of its attributes is the huge 200gb hard drive although there are much bigger hard drives out there in desktops mine included this is more than enough and very impressive for a laptop. Having all this storage means I can just keep files I have downloaded on my laptop rather than transferring them to my desktop for storage.

The processor that runs this laptop is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2 GHz, having dual-core technology is a big advantage as I quite often will be downloading huge files whilst listening to music and browsing the web or watching video clips. This laptop is multi tasks very well and is more than capable of letting me do all these things and more. The processor combined with the 2 GB of ram installed is sure to be enough for whatever you intend to use this laptop for and probably much, much more.

This particular laptop I feel is the ultimate in all round computing and has the functions required to meet almost all needs. It comes with a built in cam so if you are planning to use it for online conferencing or if you are just big into instant messaging then it will suit. It also comes with a cd/dvd writer so if you plan to use it to burn your own cd`s or DVDs then it is perfectly capable of this too. It has the capacity to game at the highest level also, so as you can see this doesn't have to be a laptop just to enable you to have the internet on the move it could easily replace a desktop if you wanted to save a bit space or just be able to use the computer anywhere in the home.

One of the most important thing for me in a laptop is battery life and this is another thing this laptop excels in. The battery type is a Lithium Ion and once fully charged which incidentally it does very fast it can last up to 3 and a half hours constant use even with Wi-Fi on and the processor running full power. I was very impressed with this as my last laptop would die in under two hours if Wi-Fi was being used and there is nothing worse than being smack bang in the middle of something and getting the warning that you have 15 minutes battery power left then rushing through what you are doing and making mistakes.

The built in card reader is another function that I found very useful as I am a keen photographer it is good to be able to take pictures whilst away on holiday or just out and about and get them straight on to the laptop for uploading to websites or emailing back home. I like to perfect my photos using some very powerful software that I purchased a while back and being able to go away for weekends or longer and take my holiday snaps then sit in the hotel at night and have the software and the internet right beside me is just brilliant. What happened to the days of handing your spools into boots when you got home?

The one thing I was a bit sceptical of was the fact that this laptop came running windows vista which I had heard so many nightmare tales of but I have actually found it quite good. I would still choose xp over it but perhaps that is mainly because I am accustomed to it now and as they say better the devil you know.

I am not going to go down the line of adding a huge list of specifications but I will list the most appropriate ones that people will look for when buying a laptop.

The important specifications.

Cache Memory: installed 4mb

Dimensions & Weight: Depth 27.5 cm, Height 2.6 cm, Weight 2.8 kg, Width 36.6 cm

Graphics chip: NVIDIA GeoForce Go 7600

Max Resolution: 1280x800

Mainboard: Data Bus Speed 667MHz

Clock speed: 2GHz

Technology: Dual-Core

RAM: installed 2GB, max permitted 2GB, Technology DDR II SDRAM

Hard Drive capacity: 200GB

Built-in Devices: Stereo speakers, wireless LAN aerial, Bluetooth aerial

Card reader: supports Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo

Input device type: Keyboard, touchpad

Platform technology: Intel Centrino Duo

Dual-Core technology explained simply.

Dual-core processing is exactly what it sounds like, two processors running instead of one. The reason this is good is quite simple, imagine the processor in the computer to be similar to the brain of a human. The processor as the human brain would do feeds info to the various hardware and software for them to in turn react, much as the human brain makes your limbs move. The faster it can do this the faster your hardware and software will react, if the processor is inundated with requests it takes more time to pass it on to the correct hardware or software so having two makes lots of sense. When one processor is taking care of your cd burning and music downloading for instance the other processor will be only too happy to pass on any other info you need delivered to your hardware or software appliances in order for them to carry out their tasks simultaneously. This requires plenty ram to be available also though as the ram is the memory used to open up programmes and if there isn't enough ram then the processors speed and power becomes useless. Although you would think that desktops and laptops with dual-core processors would automatically be built with enough ram this is not always the case so make sure when you buy that there is at least 1GB of ram but preferably as this Sony laptop has 2GB this will allow you to get the best out of the dual-core technology.

Although there are literally thousands of uses for personal computers these days I am sure you will see from what you have read that this laptop is more than capable of taking care of most of them. A very good friend of mine works as a DJ he does discos for wedding and birthday parties and the likes and he does it all through a set of usb mixing decks some very smart software and his Sony vaio FE41Z laptop. This laptop really is a very powerful machine capable of powerful burning of cd`s and DVD's, giving very decent sound for listening to music, sharp clear pictures for watching downloaded movies or DVD's and exceptional graphics and speed for the gamers out there.

I would be more than happy to recommend this laptop to anyone whatever their needs. It's not a cheap laptop but then again it's not too expensive either. I purchased mine from pc world in the end as they were giving the best offer at the time I got the laptop, a very smart carry case and an extended three year warranty for £1099 I am unsure if this offer can still be obtained but I do know that most other places were at the time looking for around £1199 without any extra warranty or the carry case so it was a very good deal at the time. Since my purchase a little over two months ago I would say I have spent somewhere in the region of 220 hours on this laptop and have never had a problem with it including it even running a bit slower. It just gets on with whatever I throw its way, at a very fast speed.

I have attempted to list everything you are likely to need to know about this laptop including some comparison and I hope I have succeeded without becoming boring. I have also tried to explain things in a way that everyone whether experienced or novice will understand as i read a lot of reviews on this type of thing which are written in such a way that if you dont know all the jargon then they will mean very little to you. I hope if you are currently trying to figure out which laptop to buy or are considering a purchase in the near future that this review will have been of use to you.

Thank you for reading!

©2007 thebigc1690 

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