This is the first Sony Vaio I have owned. I have stayed away from Vaios in the past because of Sony's insistance on customising the way operating systems work (the Sony Clie Palm OS devices were a testament to this).
I have owned a couple of Acer laptops which, although heavy and with low battery life, are extremely reliable (my oldest one is 10 years old and still going strong). I once owned a Compaq laptop that fell to pieces within 6 months.
So when it came to upgrade in December from my last Acer, I was stuck between choosing between Toshiba and Sony. In the end, the Sony X-Black screen clinched it - I'd seen the screen in the shops and it was incredibly sexy. The Toshiba was a very close second choice. I bought the Sony at eBuyer.com for just
under £550 brand new.
After my Sony was delivered, I quickly uninstalled just about everything that they included as I already had my own software. The Sony comes with 512MB of memory, but up to 128MB can be allocated to the graphics card, so straight away it's cut down to 394MB left to use. With Windows XP Media Centre and a couple of applications running, you're soon over that limit which means your hard drive is being used for memory (so everything grinds to a crawl). I have added a further 1GB of memory to my machine, which has really made a huge improvement.
For connectivity, there is the standard wireless LAN, wired LAN, internal modem, two fast USB 2.0 ports, a firewire connection and a connector for an external monitor or projector. This is made up for though by the range of memory cards that the laptop will take - just about anything going!
The 80GB hard drive is quiet and responsive, pretty much does what it says on the tin. The sound card is good enough for a laptop, although the internal speakers aren't great, especially for music. There are headphone and microphone sockets available, so use them! Sound through headphones is fine.
The dual-layer DVD writer again does everything that is expected of it. Writing to dual-layer disks is a slow process though, usually at 2x speed - probably due to the newness (is that a word?) of the technology. One problem that I have noticed though is that sometimes on DVD-R and DVD-RW disks, the operating system doesn't detect the files on them. Quickly ejecting the disk and closing it again resolves the problem which indicates that it may be a problem with the Sony DVD device driver - hopefully this will be resolved in the Windows Vista version.
The keyboard is well spaced out and the different feel of the keys compared with other laptops takes a day or so to get used to. Overall though it feels more solid like a desktop keyboard.
The mousepad is functional, although I had to remove the Sony installed "utility" software to make it behave sensibly.
As for battery life, expect around 3 hours between charges (which is much more than I was used to with the Acer laptops). Charging is quick, even when in use although the charger becomes very hot. This seems to be normal on laptops though as the Acers and the Compaq I owned also did the same.
The dual-core processor is very efficient and overall the laptop is very responsive. I do software development work and run SQL server express at the same time, as well as running Office applications in the background with no problems after installing the extra memory.
Compared with Acer machines, it is a very lightweight and slim machine. Obviously the 15.4" widescreen screen makes it a little wider, but it's worth it for that screen :)
Windows XP Media Centre (with an upgrade to Vista Home Premium included) was supplied with the machine. It is the first time I have used Media Centre, but found it easy to use and also that it included some unexpected items like IIS (the Microsoft web-server) which isn't included in XP Home Edition.
One last point is the build quality. Overall it is very well built, but just watch the corners of the front of the machine as it is possible for them to lift slightly if something rubs up against them (only when the screen is opened up, so pretty unlikely). A couple more screws would have been beneficial.
Overall, a very good all-purpose machine! Just add the extra memory though. Very very happy!
Update, just over a year later:
Still going strong, very impressed with this laptop. I got the disk to upgrade to Vista Home Premium which I like even more than XP media centre.
My next laptop will definitely be a Sony Vaio!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) positive aspects include the speed, apperance/design of the laptop, and the enhanced performance. (-) i have a matt black laptop and it shows dirty finger prints.
Mar 4th, 2007
(May 22nd, 2008)
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