Computer Reviews

Hello folks , its Vince the radio man with another review for you . I've been a radio buff for many years , I have a large collection and I love to do side by side compares . The Sony SW07 is the replacement model for the discontinued SW100 . In my review of the SW100 I knocked it abit because of the price and the overall sound quality from both the internal speaker and the headphones ( ...and no, I dont need a new pair of phones) .... the SW07 is an improvement in this area , however , still high priced . Both radios are wonders of the modern world ...so small yet so powerful and functional . The SW07 is a little larger than the SW100 ( thank goodness for those of us who have large hands and fingers ) and I find it to be a bit better in the dynamic range department . Tuner selectivity and sensativity about the same . The 07 and the 100 are sold as kits . The come with an active antenna . I find the antenna with the SW07 is far better than the 100 . Also , the SW07 is built much more durable than the SW100 . The layout and button functionality is easier to use and better thought out . Also , a much nicer, clearer visual display with a luminescent blue background .As far as other miniatures on the market ( Sangean ATS 606, which is much cheaper , is about the best after the SW07 and SW100 but not in the same class ) ...there are really no other competitors . If you're looking to spend a decent buck on a quality shortwave set and small is what you need , look no further . If you like a full size set and have a few more bucks to spend buy the SW77 ( which is the King of all radios!!!! ) ...if not the SW07 is surely the Prince.

I have used the earlier (1980's)Radio Shack DX-400, the Sangean ATS-909 (Radio Shack DX-398), the Sony SW 7600G, the Grundig ETraveller VII and this radio. For the general user who wishes just to listen to foreign broadcasts and not bother with trying to tune in remote and low powered stations, all are excellent and comparable in sensitivity and selectivity. The SW-07 and SW 7600G offer synchronous tuning which somewhat aids intelligibility with reception that periodically fades and becomes distorted, but that provided in the SW07 is much quieter and more effective. The SW07 has more programmable station selections than any of the others. It has, as well, many convenience features that older Sony models and the other radios listed do not have such as an effective night illumination of its tuning screen and programmed time of day selected broadcast frequencies of a number of foreign broadcasters. The only truly portable decent shortwave radio that one can carry in a pocket, in my experience, is the Grundig which does quite well with its short telescoping antenna. Reception on all radios benefits greatly from the use of a long wire antenna, but the SW07 has a compact substitute folding circular antenna that, while not offering the performance of a wire, does better than the telescoping built in antenna.

I recently purchased this Sony KV-32FV310 Tv when my other tv gave out. I am a huge fan of SONY and have been since I was in my teens. I have been very pleased with all products from them. I researched this TV on the internet and also in the stores. When I was comparing this SONY tv to the competition, I have to say this SONY tv blew the competition away with a great price and great features. This is the top analog tv on the market and when you see the amazing picture quality, along with the WOW and Tru-Surround sound options you can definetly see why. Nothing else seems to quite match the natural depth and dimensionality, and corner-to-corner clarity of Wega TVs. I have had this TV for a little over a month and am very satisfied.

The SONY KV-32FV310 has the traditional squarish 4:3 aspect ratio screen, so you'll enjoy screen-filling detail and clarity with your everyday news and network shows - and watching sports is a "whole new ballgame." Sony's best 3D digital comb filter delivers higher horizontal and vertical resolution and reduced video noise. And its 10-bit signal processing renders ultra-precise gray-scale gradations.

With 40% more screen area than a 27" screen, this 32" delivers a high-impact viewing experience with high-quality sources like DVD. Unlike VHS tapes, which usually re-format movies to fit a standard TV screen, DVDs often present movies in their original widescreen format. When the KV-32FV310 detects that a widescreen "anamorphic" DVD is playing, it can automatically switch to "16:9 Enhanced" mode.

Here's why videophiles love 16:9 Enhanced: Where most TVs reduce the number of scanning lines - and resolution - of anamorphic DVDs by 25%, 16:9 Enhanced mode slightly compresses the height of each line so you see the full 480 scanning lines. No image quality is lost because all of the scanning lines are concentrated in the 16:9 window and none are wasted on the non-usable portion of the screen (the black bars above and below). So whether the video source is widescreen or standard, you get full resolution - you'll love the picture!

The KV-32FV310 plays well with the rest of your A/V system - it has inputs for up to 5 A/V components, including two component video and two S-video jacks.

Key Features:

FD Trinitron picture tube
2-tuner PIP
4:3 screen aspect ratio
auto 16:9 Enhanced viewing mode
10-bit 3D digital comb filter
SRS TruSurround/WOW™ audio processing
181-channel tuner

multibrand remote with some glow-in-the-dark buttons
video input labeling
5 A/V inputs, including:
3 composite video (2 rear, 1 front)
2 S-video (1 rear, 1 front)
2 component video (rear)
2 RF inputs for antenna/cable
30 watts total (7.5 x 2, plus 15 for subwoofer)
35-3/8"W x 26-7/8"H x 23"D
warranty: 1 year parts, 90 days labor (2 years parts on the picture tube)

the clarity and quality of the picture is awesome. this set has loads of options that are too numerable to mention. the sound is fantastic also making movies much more enjoyable to watch. easy set up.

Since December 2002, I have expanded my hobby list with PHOTOGRAPHY. I have to admit, that the manual IS very USEFUL, because of all the options the camera has to offer. After we mastered all the features with my husband, we were absolutely amazed with the ability of our camera. (All kind of settings are possible!)4 megapixels are ENOUGH to achieve a crispy clear pictures of any size. And frankly, there is still more to master! ENJOY!

This is a nice leather case that fits my Sony DSC-S75 camera perfect. What is really nice is you can use the strap and carry the case over your shoulder or use the belt clip. It has a seperate pocket for the memory sticks and any other small items you may want to carry. The only limitation is that if you have extra lens for your camera there is no place to carry them.

I just bought a Sony MD that came with a PCLink.
This is so much better then any MP3 player out there its amazing they haven't caught on because you can record from a ton of sources from your computer audio files mp3 etc. and straight from a CD player and more.
Plus Minidiscs are cheap for 20 discs it was about... each discs holds 74 min. worth of music which is a lot cheaper then MP3 media for sometimes less the amount of space.
Minidiscs don't download but record in real time and the quality is just about perfect the MD player is very small and its easy to use once you learn everything.
Hopefully people will catch on soon!

this minidisc player is great . the sound quality is exceptional , better than anything i've heard before . the extra features make it a must buy for anyone who wants to do the music quality of minidiscs justice and for the money it's unbeatable

When I purchased my last laptop, I looked at a VAIO, just for the MemoryStick drive. Ultimately, I decided to buy a PowerBook G4. (I know the specs say OS 7.5 or later, but this device is definitely Panther-compatible!) I *love* this card! I just leave it in my card bay all the time, and presto! I have a Memory Stick drive!

Data transfer is much faster than that using a camera's USB cable, and much less unwieldy. When you insert a memory stick, it simply appears as a drive, and you can do to it all the things that you usually do with drives! When a stick isn't inserted, you can easily forget that the card is in.

One important thing to note: this device really shouldn't be removed and then reinserted without rebooting. If you don't reboot, it won't show up! Just eject the stick instead of the card.

A must have. Using the camera to download images to your computer--if it even works--is a slow process and you need to use the Sony Picture Lite software, which is terrible. This allows you to access the images and movies instantly, and open them directly in a good image manipulating program like Photoshop.

This remote works flawlessly with my Toshiba TV. It's easy to hold and the buttons are a nice size. The best feature is that it has the Picture in Picture button, which many remotes in the price range do not have. (You use the VCR buttons to control PIP features).

This such a great remote. It feels so ergonomic. The buttons feel just right. The channel and volume controls are perfectly placed and sized. You can even control PIP features (works for my Panasonic). The finish is very high quality. Everyone should have this remote. At this price you cannot get better than this.

I bought this monitor from Office Depot through Amazon.com and am very pleased with it. I read a lot of other reviews about LCDs having dead pixels on them, and was a bit concerned before ordering, but I am pleased to say that I only found 1 dead pixel. This monitor rotates both vertically and horizontally and looks and functions great. Color and resolution are very good also.

I just updated my home computer system and am so happy with my new monitor- it is a flat panel LCD monitor that is smaller, more compact and streamlined than my bulky older monitor. The Sony Flat panel LCD looks modern and has sharp resolution- its great for gamers!

To bring home the first notebook of my life, I have looked at Dell I 8200, IBM thinkpads A31, Compaqs and Gateways and I ended up getting VAIO GRX 670. ... after rebates there are not too many notebooks out there with a 16.1 inch display and DVD RW drive. The VAIO looks cool and display is awesome for watching movies or playing games. For running applications as a programmer there is plenty of oomph provided with P4-M 2G processor and 512 MB ram. Another important thing is we can upgrade this to 1GB RAM if it is not good enough for running a memory intensive application such as an Application Server for example. The only negative point is the video card is not the latest ATI 9000 but it has the older leader ATI 7500 with 32 MB which should meet all the video demands unless you are a real intensive gamer who plays games that are written using the features enhanced by the ATI 9000 card which costs another 140 dollars more.

I have heard that SONY's warranty does not cover the screen so to be on the safe side I have bought the extended warranty. By the way Sony has provided a lot of cool software for buring DVD's and making movies and the memory stick is a plus if you own other SONY products. The performance has been great when watching a movie or running multiple applications simultaneously. I do not see any need to ugprade the memory to 1GB.

Overall there are so many choices out there but I could not find one that has everything I am looking for in the price range. In the end after looking at this VAIO I I have fallen for it :-) I think this is a good long term desktop replacement.

I've had this machine since Saturday and I can't keep my hands off of it. This is a truly amazing laptop with the combination of beautiful screen, 2 gigahertz P4 processor and writable DVD drive. I have had various Sony desktops in the past, but this is my first laptop. The screen is beautiful, very bright and sharp. I was looking for a machine to play around with making DVDs of MPEGs from my digital camera and analog VHS tapes that I have all over the place. The new Sony Click-to-DVD software is very easy and reliable. My only negative comment on it is that it hides some of the statistics and error results from you. If there is a problem, it doesn't tell you much, although I realize that it is meant to be very consumer friendly and part of this depends on NOT telling the user all the technical details of codec used etc. The new Toshiba DVD-RW drive is a bit slower than other DVD writers out there (only 1x write speed for DVD compared to 2.4 for most others and 4x for the newest ones), but, it is the only game in town for a laptop machine. It too, is very reliable. I have sucessfully burned data and DVD-video onto Memorex DVD-RW, Memorex DVD-R and Panasonic DVD-R media over the weekend. I am very happy with the 2 gigahertz P4. High processor speed is almost essential for video processing where it can take hours to encode a DVD. Last night I was writing to a DVD-RW (data), surfing and encoding another DVD with Adobe Premiere LE (included with the machine) and still performance was workable, given that the CPU was working over 90%. I was thinking about upgrading from the included 512 meg ram to a full gig, but I don't even think I need to do that. Sony's new Drag'n Drop cd/dvd writing software works very well for writing data to DVD-R and DVD-RW disks (works for CD-R and CD-RW, although I haven't tried that yet.)

i have owned this product since april of 2002, and i am more than satisfied. Performance is great and i have never had a problem with this machine. Highly Reccomended

I did read the many reviews on this site about how slow the hard drive is and how the video card was no good. Unfortunately I read it all AFTER I bought the machine.

How wrong those reviews are. This machine is VERY fast, and can handle very graphic intensive games. Examples: I tried Return to Castle Wolfenstein on this while running a file sharing program. No problem. I ran some mathematical simulation on it for about 12 hours (think 100% CPU utilization). No problem. Video playback flawless. My previous machine was a workstation with a 7200 RPM scsi drive on it and the only thing I notice different on this machine is that it is MUCH quieter than my previous.

I've owned several sony computers over the last 5 years. I can vouch for their quality after drops, dozens of trips with them, and hours of very intensive use. THis machine, after 2 months 'hammering' it, is holding up great.

Okay, when I bought my Ipod, I picked up the DLO Executive PodFolio. It looked nice, and it seemed to offer the access I needed and portect the player. BUT, I couldn't effectively dock the thing because the case got in the way, similarly use with the remote while the case was closed was limited. The final straw was when I noticed the thing was SCRATCHING my 40GB Ipod...
I'd seen this thing a few times and thought it looked sort of awkward. Yet, when the DLO went in the junk pile, I couldn't find anything that suited what I figured was the suitable balance between protection, access and looks, the flipstand won out in the end.
I am completely satisfied with this case, it feels solid and flipping the door open to access the wheel is not a problem since I'm used to opening a case flap. The case offers complete access to the dock connector and the remote works fine, though sometimes I have to push down on it more than I feel comfoortable doing...
A word on the dock, it isn't a "dock" rather, it's more of a cradle, it accepts the end of a dock cable and seats it vertically so that you can put the flipstand down over it. It doesn't have the advanced functionality of the actual dock, which features and audio line-out and accepts the dock cable in the back and has its own dock connector at the top. However, it's very effective and convenient.

I'm a clumsy 14 year old, and I tend to drop things very easily. So when I bought my iPod yesterday, I wanted a durable case to protect my expensive mp3 player. I didn't want the rubber skins, because they do not keep the iPod from breaking. When I saw this, I knew it was perfect. It's clear, and is very nicely designed. Unlike the skins, it doesn't take away from the iPod's beautiful design. The flipstand is also convenient for when you want to put it on a table. The dock is also very awesome, because my 10 GB iPod did not come with an included dock. It makes charging and syncing extremely easy. The plastic is very durable, annd I am extremely pleased with my puchase.