I read a lot of pro. reviews before deciding to buy, and nearly bought the Acer 6930G instead - but fortunately I ignored the negative comments in the pro reviews and and am very happy with my purchase. Compared to the Acer it was hard to find this model in the shops, so I had to rely on online reviews and bought from the Internet.
Firstly let me address the criticisms of the screen. I heard a lot of people saying the screen wasn't bright, but this can't be further from the truth - I can't view the screen on full brightness as it hurts my eyes it is so bright!! (and very white). Normal use is around 80%. Tho do note that the 'S' model has the double-lamp LCD screen, which cheaper models don't.
Secondly in relation to casing quality - I don't know what Sony sent to reviewers, but compared to other laptops
I've owned (as an IT pro I've had and dealt with many) it is the best so far, the metal outer casing (yes, it is metal like Apple Mac Pro's, not plastic) is very strong, and there is minimal flex around the keyboard or trackpad/wrist support. I guess it could be stronger if necessary, but at what cost of weight?! Certinaly a non-issue in my book, you have to press unduly hard to get it to flex. I also haven't found the issue of 'case creak' that I read about either. The case is very strong, but if you touch the LCD screen itself it does seem a little more delicate than my previous HP - just don't let the kids too near it! Feels like it will last much longer than my average of needing a new laptop approx every 8 months due purely to wear & tear!
Finally, battery life - this isn't designed as a business laptop (nor has it the price tag of one) so you wouldn't expect 4 or 5 hours battery life - it has a large bright screen, so be realistic. However, I can easily get 2h to 2h30m of continuous use with WiFi and closer to 4 hours with more normal stop-start use. Easily enough to watch a film if you're on the train etc. Having said that, I do agree with one review that stated the recharge rate it slow. Compared to previous experinces, it is. Although perhaps this is to the benefit of the health of the battery and give a longer overall battery life during the lifetime of the machine (normally I find they start to seriously die off at about 6 months) time will tell.
Bluray playback is good, though I feel a better player could have been included (especially from the major champion of Bluray - Sony!!). The Bluray decoding does eat up processing power, so don't expect to be able to do anything else at the same time on the laptop other than watch a Bluray movie, as the movie starts to break up if you do. DVD Playback is much better, and you can use Windows Media Player which does a better job of rendering the DVD than the bundled WinDVD software, that creates a lot of strange effects on the scale-up to full screen. I do hope MS come out with a Bluray update for WMP then I can start watching Bluray in a slightly less irritating program! One HUGE disappointment is that you can't play Bluray films when you have the HDMI cable attached, so you can't watch them on your TV. This is because the WinDVD program is paranoid that you are trying to copy the film and refuses to play when the HDMI cable is attached. This is my mind makes the HDMI port completely useless on a media laptop! What other reason is there for having it?!
1600x900 screen is great, sadly not quite wide enough to display 2 web pages next to each other - however, having viewed the Acer 1920x1050 screen, text is probably too small on the 16in screen to be used daily, and though I loved the idea, after trying one out for 30mn I found my eyes starting to strain. I chose 16in format over 18 as it gives much greater portability and is barely bigger than the 15.4in standard - it fits (just) into 15.4in cases!
The only real downside is that despite the power available, Vista is still rather slow compared to XP. I was expecting a big leap forward from my previous 1.6Ghz / 1.5Gb RAM combination, but the performance increase is negligable. Having said that, I wouldn't go back to XP, which now feels very dated in comparison after living with Vista for a while.
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!
Nov 20th, 2008
(Dec 8th, 2008)
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