Opinions - Sony Vaio Custom

oHUTCHYo · 23 Jan 2011 at 13:47

Shortly I plan to buy a Sony Vaio, it was originally going to be from the high-street until I stumbled upon the official site where you can customise a laptop. Ive put together the following spec but have some questions below that; (Price would be ~£700-£750)

Processor: Intel® CoreTM i5-480M, 2.66GHz
Operating system: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Language and keyboard: English (QWERTY)
Finishes: Glossy white
Hard drive: 320 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
Memory: 6 GB 1066MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Optical Drive: Blu-ray Disc(TM) player
Display: 39.4 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
Graphics: ATI MobilityRadeonHD5470 512MB
Microsoft® Office 2010: Office 2010 Starter
Internet security: No protection
Adobe® Creation: No Adobe® Creation
Also Included
AC Adapter: 1 AC Adapter
Wireless LAN: Wireless LAN + Bluetooth®
HDMI(TM) output: HDMI(TM) output
Battery: Battery life up to 3 hours

1920x1080 resolution on a 15" screen
I really want that resolution, but also to retain a small, light piece of kit. Is this unusual to have a res on a 15" which is more commonly found on 17"+?

320 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm) or 500GB 5600rpm
I can imagine the 5600 being a bottleneck, but the only option for 7200rpm is a relatively small 320GB. Worth the sacrifice?

Intel® CoreTM i5-480M, 2.66GHz
Is this a good enough CPU for x264 video/music encoding? I have a Q6600 2.45ghz on my desktop - how does it compare?

I know Sony are over-priced, though I'm happy to sacrifice extra £ for a quality laptop which is nice in appearance and oozes quality.

olivier renault · 23 Jan 2011 at 14:10

1) It's pretty high res. the macbook pro 15 has 900p resolution. It's comparable to the macbook air 11'' resolution. So, pretty small.

2) depends what you need the laptop for. Do you need 500GB? what about an external high capacity drive? I would take drive speed over capacity. But I'm not sure how much difference 7,200 rpm makes in real life.

3) That's mid-range CPU on laptops. Laptops will never compare to desktops. iirc a q6600 scores around 11,000 on cinebench R10, a i5-480M scores around 7,000. You'll need a i7 quad-core to compare.

Chapple · 23 Jan 2011 at 16:24

G4ORCE, I have a Sony Vaio laptop at the moment. Mine is the VPCEA3C5E which is the 14" version.

My spec is:

14", 1600x900
i5-460
HD Radeon 5650
4GB DDR3 RAM
240GB Vertex 2E SSD (I was sent me the wrong drive so I ended up with double the capacity, WIN!)
Blu-Ray player/writer
Windows 7 Home Edition

The 14" version is very slim and light yet it really packs a punch performance wise. It's certainly up to the task when it comes to video encoding and such like olivier renault says, but it's not going to compare with a desktop, of course.

Drop me an email on gdsgdsg if you've got any more questions, I'm more than happy to give you some answers

.

oHUTCHYo · 23 Jan 2011 at 18:37

Thanks Chapple, how do you find the SSD? Worth the sacrifice in capacity?

Chapple · 23 Jan 2011 at 19:52

Well frankly, as mine is a 240GB SSD that was sent to me after I ordered a 120GB one, I've not really suffered from a lack of capacity!

But I do suggest getting one and then using a secondary external HD for storage. The speed difference is immense.

Only gutting thing for me is that I'm probs gonna have to see my E-Series to make way for something a lot smaller and cheaper

. Money is a bit thin on the ground at the mo.