Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21Z

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Look & Feel	Excellent
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Robustness & Durability	Good
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Powerful, long battery life, lightweight, strong and looks stunning !  !
Disadvantages:	Absolutely none !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

When it comes to laptops there really is just no beating Sony, they just keep coming out with better and more powerful laptops on such a regular basis it's hard to keep up. One of their latest offerings the VAIO FZ21S - Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2 GHz - 15.4" TFT really is something to behold. This laptop has the power and specifications to put some of the best desktops to shame, including X-black LCD technology reproducing amazing colour trueness. If money is no option then this is the laptop you simply must have.

As a website designer in my spare time and just generally a computer addict I put both my laptop and my desktop thoroughly through there paces and its very, very rare to find a laptop that will cope with everything I throw at it without jamming up or over heating but this little wonder breezes through it most admirably.

The processor running this laptop is an Intel core 2 duo (which I will explain a bit about later)this particular processor is a T7500 / 2.2 GHz which is amongst the highest speed processors you will find in laptops and is more than capable of coping with gaming, DVD converting and burning and serious multi tasking. The fact that it is dual core is of huge advantage to me because I very rarely sit in front of my pc or laptop performing only one task at a time.

As a professional photographer I do a lot of work with heavy CPU usage programmes such as adobe Photoshop, Corel pro and others whilst at the same time wanting to be able to browse for ideas online and usually listen to some music or that too. With most desktops these days that is easily possible but many laptops would still struggle badly to perform this sort of multi tasking but no such problems here.

After the processor the next major issue with a laptop is the amount of ram it has, most dual core laptops come with at least 1gb although this is not always the case, this particular one comes with a much more beefy 2gb which allows the start up of the laptop and the opening of programmes even hen other programmes are already running to be very quick indeed.

In the past laptop`s were mostly used to compliment our desktops but nowadays like myself many people spend almost as much time on their laptop`s as they do on their desktop`s. Some people even opt for owning just a laptop because they perhaps don't have the space for a bulky desktop. With this in mind it is now more important than ever that your laptop should have a hard drive with plenty room for storing your favourite music, videos and you're all important work files. With the massive 200 GB hard drive on the Sony VAIO FZ21S this is no problem.

So we have spoke about the processor the ram and the hard drive of this machine but just as important as those things when it comes to laptop`s is the battery, I mean you don't want to have all this power at your finger tips but be unable to use it because the battery has let you down. With the combination of the new Intel chip which uses less battery power and the awesome battery power of the Lithium Ion that Sony have installed in this laptop you need not fear that happening. Once fully charged this laptop will allow you to work flat out on it doing whatever for over three and a half hours before you get a warning about battery power, regular laptop users will realise that, that is really impressive.

With the really important issues out the way we can now discuss the cool extras that we all like to have and there's plenty available with this laptop. The Sony VAIO FZ21S comes with a built in 1.3 Megapixel webcam which has a capture resolution of 1280 x 1024. It also has a built in microphone so if you use msn to chat or if you use Skype then there's no need for an external mic. Along with this the laptop also has a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS graphics card with 256 MB Video Memory and a total graphics memory of 1023 MB so if gaming is your thing then this laptop will handle most of today's top end games no problem. Another thing added to this laptop is a card reader which will read SD Memory Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo so if uploading video clips or photos from your phone or camera is big on your list of things to do then again this laptop makes it easy, if your phone does not take a memory card then fear not for as long as you have Bluetooth then you can upload using that because this laptop also has Bluetooth built in. Add to this the built in WI-FI, speakers, CD/DVD burner, touchpad keyboard, built in fire wire, Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium and the HD ready screen and what a package you have.

There is also some free and trial software loaded to this laptop when you buy it and those are as follows,

VAIO Music Box, VAIO Recovery Utility, Skype, Google Picasa, Microsoft Works 8.5, Google Software Pack, Microsoft Office 2007 (Trial), Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0, Roxio Easy Media Creator 9, Sony Click to DVD 2.6, Microsoft Windows Media Player 11, Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.0, WinDVD BD for VAIO 8.0, Norton 360 (60 days trial), Sony SonicStage Mastering Studio 2.4, Adobe Reader 8.1

As I mentioned earlier I will now delve into an explanation on dual core technology and try to explain it in the most simplistic of terms rather than the somewhat baffling reviews there are on it other places..

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.

This laptop exceeds any I have used before including previous Sony models and although it is a lot more expensive than many out there it truly does give great value for money. I purchased this laptop a little over three months ago and have been delighted with every aspect of it so far. It is very light weight but feels very sturdy and strong, there is no side to side movement in the hinges and the keyboard doesn't feel like you could push your fingers through it like some others do. As well as all its functionality and high performance this laptop also looks the part, very well designed, slim and very eye catching (a bit like me LOL!). having now used this laptop for literally dozens of different things now including, photo enhancement, DVD burning web building and even gaming I feel I can recommend it to others with the complete knowledge that what I am writing is fact as well as my opinion.

I purchased the laptop from laptop`s direct for £935.99 but it is already down in price on their site to £829.97 which I can honestly say is well, well worth the money. As it runs windows vista and has a top of the range mother board the option is there to later upgrade the ram to 4gb so this laptop will be able to stay strong with other new release models for at least the next two years which is pretty good going these days.

A last point to finish off, one my pet hates with laptops was the annoying sound of the fan spinning ever faster trying to cool down the laptop, this definitely interfered with the enjoyment of listening to music or watching a movie on it. For years now Sony has been trying to eliminate this problem with the fans getting quieter and quieter and the laptops needing less and less cooling. They have now just about got to the silent point they have been trying to find, the lack of noise from this laptop even after running continuously for over two hours is amazing and very satisfying.

I have attempted to list everything you are likely to need to know about this laptop 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 don't 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. If you have any further questions on this machine I will be happy to answer questions left in my guest book!

Thanks for reading!

©2008 thebigc1690