New Laptop Arrived

[Tommy B]

# Intel® Centrino® Duo processor technology with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7300 (2.00 GHz and 800 MHz FSB) and Intel® PRO/Wireless 802.11a/b/g
# Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium (English version)
# 200 GB Serial ATA 4200 rpm hard disk drive
# 2 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM (2*1024 MB), maximum 2 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
# 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) Widescreen X-black LCD screen with double lamp technology
# NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GT notebook graphics processing unit with Total Available Graphics Memory of 1023 MB and dedicated Video Memory of 256 MB
# Blu-ray™ Disc Drive (up to 50 GB of storage)
# HDMI output (with HDPC)
£1299

I'm really chuffed with it so far. Performance is excellent. The screen is honestly so bright it hurts your eyes. I'm now awaiting delivery of Casino Royale in HD to test the Blu Ray drive with my HDTV. I'm also yet to try any games but I did only get my hands on it at 10pm last night and only had an hour or so to play about with it. People did warn me that the hard drive was slow but I haven't noticed it bottlenecking anything yet, in fact this laptop is vastly superior in loading times to my old PC and that had a 7,200rpm HD. It is also a stunning laptop in the flesh and has a real high class image. I personally prefer the looks to the Macbook Pro although they do both look very similar. In fact I'd say Sony must have used it for the inspiration in design for this.

So thanks to everyone who gave the thumbs up and said go for it. Also lovin' Windows Vista Hopefully this beast will keep me entertainted through UNI.

Cheers

 

[Tommy B]

I've also placed an order with OCUK for a 500GB USB 2.0 External HD to get all my stuff off my old PC before it moves on to a new owner.

UT2004 and Zero Hour run like a dream. I'm now going to try some heavier weights; Far Cry and HL2 Episode 1.

 

[Tommy B]

Oops. Obviously meant 2004, but it was early when I posted that message.

 

[Tommy B]

I'm not planning on doing much gaming with it. I appreciate the card is lacking although it seems to hold out well in Far Cry and plays all the strategy games I'm interested in with no problems. I may well invest in a PS3 for games. Still, I guess it would have been nice if Sony had put a slightly better graphics card in but I'm not complaining. The laptop offers plenty of other strong features to compensate.

The laptop is also incredible for HD so far and plays back HD material via HDMI extremely smoothly. So I'm happy about that. I'm still awaiting a Blu-Ray DVD to try in it though.

 

[Tommy B]

you should have gone for this http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/05/31/Acer-Aspire-5920/p1

that is if the keyboard colour dont put you off!

Looked at that but decided the design wans't for me.

This Sony laptop is ultra slim, sleek and stylish which is great as far as I'm conerned.

 

[Tommy B]

that graphic chip will be fine for a lot of games out now.
my laptop has the geforce 7600 and its plays game very well
he`s biggest problem with that laptop is it only having a 4200rpm HDD
bang a 7200rpm drive in and it will feel like a different laptop

I have to be honest it feels pretty damn fast as it is!

 

[Tommy B]

Does anyone know much about ExpressCard slots?

I want to buy a sound card for the laptop and it says "ExpressCard/54 slot" required. Is there only one size of ExpressCard? The sony site says my laptop has a "Express Card Slot Type 34mm."

Cheers

 

[Tommy B]

Is that the VAIO VGN-FZ11Z? I was thinking about getting one of them for uni too, either that or an alienware.. any recommendation's?

Yeah, the exact model. It is awesome for everything except gaming. Only had it a day though, any questions feel free to ask.

 

[Tommy B]

I'lll give HL2 Episode 1 a try today. Although I'll admit it struggled to play Far Cry on max settings.

More pictures shortly.

 

[Tommy B]

OK Steam's doing that thing where it takes ages to update

 

[Tommy B]

Really impressed with HL2 Episode one. Extremely smooth gameplay with:

1280 x 720 (16:9)
8XMSAA (is smooth on 16XCSAA but lags a bit during action sequences)
Full HDR
Anistrophic 16XX
All settings high and "reflect all" on water.

So doesn't do a bad job with HL2.

 

[Tommy B]

Yeah but the design of the laptop won me over, and other things like the Blu-Ray drive.

It honestly is not slow at all. It loads everything far quicker than my old PC did (Athlon 64 3500+/ 1GB Corsair Ram/ 80GB 7,200rpm HD etc.)

As long as loading times are fast I don't care. I'm not too bothered that it takes slightly longer to, say, copy a group of large files than it would otherwise.

I've also bought a 7,200rpm external HD to shove all my videos/music on.

 

[Tommy B]

Some more pics for those who were interested:

 

[Tommy B]

Don't mean to rain on your parade, but for that money and size, wouldn't an Asus G1S be a lot better? I figure if you're going to get a 15'' you might as well get a lappy with an 8600GT in it.

Sony laptops, to me, seem like you spend half the money on the actual laptop, and half the money on the Sony logo on the front. Sure, their ultra portable, carbon fibre chassis' are next to none, but is it really worth the sacrifice in components to get a laptop that weighs a few pounds less?

Personally I say "bring on the weight", it's good for the shoulder muscles

The thing is I don't really need all the extra power. I get far more satisfaction from having something visually pleasing and solid in front of me. I was looking at Evesham laptops as they are awesome value for money. I could have got one far better than this for less, but at the end of the day they do absolutely nothing for me in terms of looks. It's a tought choice, but I'd rather have beauty than the beast! And anyway, this laptop still isn't exactly slow either! And if you consider the price of individual Blu-Ray players and drives, the high prices doesn't seem as bad as you thought it was.

I was going to get the Sony AR series £2000 but I decided to save the money and put it towards my car instead.

# Intel® Centrino® Duo processor technology with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7500 (2.20 GHz and 800 MHz FSB) and Intel® PRO/Wireless 802.11a/b/g
# Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (English version)
# 320 GB Serial ATA 5400rpm hard disk drive (2 x 160 GB, RAID 0 and 1 supported)
# 2 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM (2 x 1024 MB), maximum 2 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
# 17" WUXGA (1920 x 1200) widescreen X-black LCD with double lamp technology
# NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT notebook graphics processing unit with Total Available Graphics Memory of 1023 MB and dedicated Video Memory of 256 MB
# Blu-ray Disc™ Drive (up to 50 GB of storage)
# Hybrid TV Tuner & remote control

That is a much more awseome spec, but I didn't think it was worth the money and the laptop is absolutely enormous.

 

[Tommy B]

There's also the Zoostorm 4-6621 £728

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2Ghz (Santa Rosa)
2GB DDR2 RAM
250GB Sata Hard Drive
15.4 inch TFT WXGA (1280 x 800)
nVidia 8600GS 256MB Dedicated
8x DVD+RW
Built in Wireless LAN 802.11g 54Mbps

Which with the Blu Ray drive would be the same price I paid.

I think people keep forgetting that was one of the main features I was after. I either wanted a Blu-Ray or an HD-DVD drive, and both drive the price of the laptop up significantly.

 

[Tommy B]

I don't know about that, pc blu-ray drives are £150 and 4x writers £350. I can't imagine laptop ones being ~£700.



No idea, says upto 3 hours.

Don't forget the laptop versions are significantly smaller, it's also a 4x writer. I can't exactly imagine it being cheap.

Battery life is about 2 hours on mininmal backlight although I didn't let it die completely. I haven't tried a complete full run down yet. I'll see how long it can survive with the backlight on full shortly.

 

[Tommy B]

I'm looking at getting a (gaming) laptop for uni. Thanks for your post on this Vaio. At the moment I'm tempted to go for a Macbook Pro though - with the edu discount it comes to £1200 for the lowest model, which I think is what you paid for your Sony.

If you're looking for a gaming laptop I would strongly reccomend ROCK direct laptops. They feature the new Direct X 10 NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT 512MB.

Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz,4MB,800MHz
New Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT 512MB (DX10)
WSXGA+ X-Glass rock logo
1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM (1 Module)
100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Windows Vista Home Premium
That is £1,199 and with the 2GB memory upgrade is £1,249

That would be a seriousy good gaming laptop for the time being.
http://www.rockdirect.com/viewNotebook.php?pName=XTREME 770

Although they're aren't ugly, they are on the heavy side so if design is your thing (like me) go for the MBP.

 

[Tommy B]

OK, so I've had it for almost 2 weeks now. Final thoughts:

CPU : Extremely quick. In fact I'm absolutely blown away by the CPU performance. It'll convert a 3 minute FLAC song to Apple Lossless in about 3 seconds. It'll render video with extremely advanced video filters (eg magic bullet) practically in real time. HD playback is also absolutely flawless.

HDD: So everyone said 4,200rpm would be awful. I haven't noticed it to be honest, in fact it seems very quick when copying/moving files. I also bought a WD 500GB Mybook to store larger files which works great.

GPU : Unfortunately it has to be said the 8400M GT struggles. Strangely however it manages to render HL2 Episode 1 with max settings and high AA/AF extremely smoothly. Perhaps this is down to extremely good coding by Valve?

Audio : Built in sound quality is pretty good when connected to my NAD amp, but I decided to buy a Terratec Aureon USB sound card and that has improved it quite a bit.

Display : It's only 1280 x 800. However, besides the resolution it uses the same dual lamp technology found in the latest Bravia TVs. To put it simply, the screen on this thing is absolutely and utterly incredible. My dad just bought a £500 Dell Ultra-Sharp 24"" screen and this just laughs at it. The colour reproduction and brightness really are top notch. My friend was extremely jealous when he brought his HP laptop up and side by side, the difference between the screens was ridiculous.

So besides the graphics card, I am absolutely loving this laptop. I'll stick to strategy games and probably get a PS3 for games.