Notebook Reviews

IBought VAIO TR 3A this afternoon. Returned to CompUsa in two hours since the CD/DVD-ROM shook loudly. The second one works ok, if you keep it as it is.
Pro:The product is 4 star. It has more things than you expect from a 3.11 pounds computer. Screen is neat and bright. IEEE, wireless networking, noise level, etc are catching up with today's need.
Cons: Spending more than four hours to upgrade OS to pro, it just kept repeating installation process. Then I could not start it. I had to use recovery function using F10. I called Sony. Althoug I was prepared to be insulted, I did not expect they could that bad. The tech guy said upgrading is your problem, not Sony problem, I cannot comment on anything related to upgrading. He went on, Sony neither encourage nor discourage upgrade, any problem you encounter later on when you install other softwear is not Sony's problem.
Now, to upgrade, or not to upgrade, is problem. I do not like XP Home OS, but do not want to risk loosing wireless connection and other functions.
I will give them Zero star because Sony tech guy is capable of taking away all the joy you could have with a new computer.

This computer has a lot of bang for your buck. I love the built in camera and the ease of use; just press one button and you're off. I also love the small form factor and its lighweight makes it perfect to lug around. Barely weighs anything. Feels lighter than a school text book. For something that is so small, it has all the port connectors I would use; firewire, usb, vga, ethernet, and a magicgate port to boot. Some people complained that the native resolution would make text too small on screen, but I find it perfect. I gave it only 4 stars because it runs on crappy windows xp. Otherwise great product and Sony customer support is very helpful.

This nifty little machine has a plenty of capabilities....all in a compact, light-weight package....but what most people call a gripe I find a plus...the bottom of the laptop gets quite warm but on those chilly late-night surfing sessions I find the heat generated by my TR2A a welcome benefit...as long as it doesn't harm the computer itself I have no problems with the comforting warmth that emanates from my little lap-companion...I rate this wonderful machine an A+++++++++!!!!

I ordered this before tax day in April and I am now told that I won't see it until August. Amazon has blown past expected delivery dates several time so far, so I have no reason think that they will meet the August date. Order this product only if you never want to receive it.

This is the card you want if your getting a Digital Rebel! The 512 will get you about 142 pictures.It downloads fast ,and gives you great pictures,what more do you want.If you are spending at least 1000 dollars on a camera don't go cheap on the compact flash cards! Get a good one! This card I got online for about 150 dollars.Make sure you are getting the Ultra 2 not just the Ultra there is a difference the Ultra is good but not as fast as the Ultra 2 ,you will be thankful you spent a few a

extra bucks and got the best card for the Canon Digital Rebel

I pre-ordered this item from Amazon. Apparently, there was an initial delay with Amazon's supply, but I just got mine. With a price like this and free shipping (which, despite being "Super Saver," was speedy as usual), I have no complaints.

Works fine so far, and the capacity boost over my old 64MB card has me almost giddy: The "pictures remaining" counter on my 3MP camera jumped from about 40 to over 300.

Helpful info: The manufacturer's "X" speed rating equivalent, which isn't easy to find online, is 60X write and 66X read.

This is a great computer. Very Fast can play a few games that ask for a 3d card. The Dvd burner is a great plus so is the included software such as works and Age of Empires 2. Sony offers many great media software titles. This is my 2nd sony Viao my other one is 5 years old and still works. I haven't ever had a problem with anything sony. I have a cd player thats over 12 years old and it is still working. Ok the bad about this computer. 1. It's heavy 2. Bad Bad Bad Batery life only last maybe an hour and another battery costs 245.00 so this isn't for travelers. Also sony sections their hard drive in two sections that dosent add up to 40 gb more like 37. Besides these problems this is a great computer just get reddy to lug the brick sized power converter with you.

It was with some scepticism that I bought Sony FRV27, more swayed in its favour by the solid brand name. But I have had no difficulty in setting it thru its paces. It is fast, the display is excellent, and a well laid out keyboard and its ports. A tad bit heavy and with an extremely poor battery life. The charger is a bit too heavy particularly when you have to lug it around. The bundled software for making DVDs' is intuitive and easy to work with. You dont miss Nero too much. It could have done with an Infrared port and a S-video out for TV output. But all in all a wonderful package and a joy to work with.

Great computer. I had trouble with the cd drive but the retailer exchanged for a new one. A friend with the same computer had the exact same problem bought at the same place at nearly the same time. Maybe just a bad lot. Since then its been great.

What a headache, after hours of pulling my hair out, the dongles were bad. I purchaced two of these cards and both dongles were defective right out of the box. It seems this is a common problem with the Netgear PCMCIA cards. Sure they were under warranty but who can afford the down time of constant dongle replacement. Avoid this item and get a 3COM product, they never fail.

This is a really good card, easy to install, and is very reliable. The only bad thing is that the Wire connected to the card is fragil, and will break off eventually. I read about this problem before buying, but I figured, if Im extra careful, it wont happen to me.. but it does, and will... Ive had it for over a year now, and havent had to replace it yet, but any day now I will.. a slight bump to my laptop and the cord falls out.. Other than that problem, I recomend this card, if your not always on the go with your laptop... Z

This is a great product. I just got it in today and within five minutes it's installed and on the network. I reccomend buying this product and other netgear products before even thinking about buying Linksys products. I bought a linksys PCMPC100 for this laptop and it turned out to be faulty. I sent it back for another and it was bad as well. Now I have this card and it works like a charm.

This is great laptop that has some very nice features and a nice video display.

That's about it. Windows XP Home for whatever reason does not seem to like the video driver that Compaq supplies with it. I face intermittent restart errors, usually while just browsing the web. Compaq is useless, as they have no clue what causes the problem. That's too bad, since XP is ruining a perfectly good PC.

Get one, then wipe it clean and install either XP Pro or WIndows 2000.

The HP 1500 series is similar to the 900 series, though this higher end line uses the far superior Intel Pentium 4 chip as its CPU. The 1525 looks great, though it weighs in a little heavy at 7 lbs. The HP genes are apparent in its design and the result is pleasing. The CPU is an awe-inspiring 2.4 GHz P4, capable of more multi-tasking and graphics intense applications than most users will ever have a need for. The system memory is provided by a very fast 512 megs of DDRAM, easily doubled with another 512 slice. The hard drive is a generous 40 gigs. A DVD/CD-R/W combination drive is included. All the Compaq's connections are in the right place, though missing throughout the entire 15xx line is any USB 2.0 port. However, there are FireWire ports available, and these are quite fast for peripherals that are IEEE-1394 compliant (though it appears that USB 2.0 will be the winning technology in the high-speed peripheral connection protocol battle). The video card is an adequate ATI 32 megs (unfortunately, this is shared memory, not dedicated to video alone) driving a very sharp 15" active matrix display. (I am a fan of ATI graphics cards because they have been quite reliable over the long haul and because upgrading them from ATI's nice website is a snap. However, this machine should have been given 32 or 64 megs of *dedicated* video RAM) Overall, this is a very good machine that would be a great machine were it equipped with onboard USB 2.0 ports, a little beefier video memory, and were it to weight a pound or so less. Nonetheless, it's a winner made by a company that looks like it's here to stay.

There are two very comparable notebooks close enough in price to call a tie: the Compaq Presario 1525US and the Toshiba Satellite 1905-S303. On paper they look very similar: 2.4 GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, 15' screen, ATI Radeon graphics chipset (AKA M6-P). However a closer look gives the Compaq a slight edge.

Screen: Both 15' but the Toshiba is 1024-by-768 pixels while the 1280-by-1024 pixels. To your eyes the Compaq will be sharper because there are more and smaller dots on the screen. This matters a lot more than you might think (the Compaq is much easier on the eyes).

Weight: The Toshiba is 8.3 pounds, while the Compaq is 7.0 pounds. While neither is a lightweight, you will notice that extra 1.3 pounds if you carry your notebook around a lot.

On other issues they are pretty much the same: great for any use other than high-end 3D games (very few notebooks are).

Both are a little power hungry and don't have the best battery life (2-3 hours of good use). For more than that you need to spend a bit more on a notebook using a true P4-M processor (hands down the best notebook CPU ever made but it cost more). However these are very powerful mobile desktops that work great for those who have their notebooks plugged in most places they go. These machines will handle high-end computing tasks for many years to come, but the Compaq wins by virtue of its superior display.

I use a 512MB Sandisk CF card in my Canon S45 camera. I put several pictures on the card, of varying sizes and qualities. None of them displayed onscreen, and even the Preview option showed a sort of colored fuzzed-out picture instead of a thumbnail view. This is the biggest piece of junk I have ever used, thank goodness it was free. I wonder why, they're probably unloading them, or the free ones are all secretly 'refurbished' or something. Shame on Amazon.

Got this "free" from Amazon recently, when I bought a Sandisk CompactFlash card. As some of the other reviews said, it was easy to hook up and worked great right out of the box. However, after using it a bit more, I have come up with a couple small issues. (NOTE: I have a Canon Digital Rebel 6.3MP camera and usually shoot large JPEGs.)

- The memory card reader is relatively slow at reading the large files generated by the camera. The JPEG files from the Digital Rebel are typically between 4 and 6 MB and they can take 10-15 seconds to display. This isn't much a problem during a slide show, but when you want to jump ahead it makes it difficult because the device seems like it isn't responding. You'd think with Sandisk being the current king of fast flash, that the reader would be quicker.

- The card reader cannot (or will not) read files larger than 5.3MB. You get an error on the screen saying as much, if you try. My pictures aren't typically this big, but depending the picture they can be, which is even more irritating because some pictures from a given card will show up while others won't.

- Another warning for those that use high quality digital SLRs etc, is that this camera reads ONLY JPEG files. It does not display RAW files, nor can it extract the embedded JPEGs. Of course, I didn't expect it to do so, but this may not be clear to other potential buyers.

Obviously, I could shoot lower quality (but if I spend that much on a camera, why would I?) or I could convert the images to smaller files on the PC (but this eliminates the ease of use factor). I think if I had paid for this product rather than receiving it free, the above issues might give enough reason for me to return it.

I just love this nifty little gizmo! The set-up is extremely easy-just plug it in and all necessary cables are provided. Then you just plug in your flash card (or flash stick or other-it takes several kinds) and you are now viewing your digital images on your own television! Instead of everyone standing around your small computer screen, you can see your images on your large TV screen.

You can either let the images run via the slide show, or take control and move through your images at your own pace. The remote lets you rotate pictures, and even niftier--it lets you zoom in. The zoom in feature keep the image clear.

The best feature is that you can pack this gizmo up and take it with you. We just returned from an Alaskan cruise (with a ton of digital pictures). So I took this viewer over to my parents, plugged it into their TV and they were able to see all our pictures while sitting back in their easy chairs. No photo's to pass around and around--just sit back in comfort and enjoy!

I would highly recommend this product--it's great!

I have to say that this mouse is very well designed for laptop users. It was a great mouse, and, you can read the other reviews to find out how.

I bought this mouse when I bought my Toshiba Laptop for use in school. The mouse worked great:
*Instantly recognized when plugged in.
*Small size perfect for portable use.
*Etc Etc.

The problems started after about 8 months of constant use, being carried from class to class, being unplugged and plugged several times everyday. It worked great untill the cord got a short in it. The mouse started to stop working if you moved the cord close to the USB connector. I fixed this by cutting off about a foot of the cord and the USB connector, and connecting another one. This seemed to solve the problem, but now, after exactly a year of using the mouse, the laser light on it is turning on and off for no apparent reason, and I am afraid I am now shopping for a new mouse.

Therefore I conclude that while this mouse is great for laptops, in is not durabble enough to be called truelly portable. It cannot stand up to the use that a mobile laptop user would give it. However, I have to be fair and mention that the plug on my power supply eventually came off after being plugged and unplugged so often, so this mouse is not the only non-durable laptop item.

I purchased this mouse because of its attractive price being it is optical. It was very easy to setup on my Windows 98 desktop, although I guess it is used for laptops. But at any rate, I loved the simplicity of this mouse.

The draw back was the wheel for me. When ever I would want to scroll down a page and it would run over a drop-down list, it would change the setting of the web page and take me places I didn't want. This happens EVEN if the selected option in the drop-down list is NOT HIGHLIGHTED. But if you switch its mode to Default, then the mouse only allows you to scroll 1 line per scroll unit! That is too slow for me! Even if you change the Scroll Speed, it doesn't work if you remain in Default. It is not a major problem, but an annoying one. Other than that, this mouse is small and durable, which I prefer. I would rate it a 3.5 if I could, but 3 would sound too low. So I rated it 4 stars, especially considering its sticker price.

This mouse is PERFECT for people like me who, with their laptops, are fine with the touchpad/eraser head for short periods of time, but like to unwind with a normal mouse for longer periods of time...Or if you flat out can't stand your touchpad/eraser head for any period of time.

The size of this mouse is excellent for mobility. It fits into very small spaces, i.e. into a compartment of your notebook carrying case. It's shortened cord (5-ft) is brilliantly employedto accommodate people using it with their laptops. It's never too short, or too long.

It's an optical mouse, so you can expect the same razor-sharp accuracy you would with any full-sized optical mice.

My notebook is running Windows XP, and interfaces flawlessly with the mouse. I just plugged it in and it worked! No set-up required. Such is not the case with older operating systems, but the mouse comes with an installation disk to guide you through it.

I was impressed with the nice big screen. However after using for a few weeks I realized some of the impracticalities of this machine that some of you prospective buyers may want to know about.

The laptop is obviously good as per the features and the other reviews. However my experience will help some of the users to put the features in perspective and so I will focus on the negatives for this review. Please refer to other reviews for positive remarks. Combined you will have a good idea if you need this machine.

CONS:
1. Laptop is quite wide because of the big screen, so in domestic flights it was a pain to use it. Privacy is out of question as well!
2. Extremely noisy harddisk. May be its my machine only. But after sending twice for service, Sony support got back to me saying noise levels are normal harddisk operations. I use server side software for programming and it tends to write data to disk frequently. So get I guess I just have to get used to the constant crackling sound from the harddisk.
3. No InfraRed port for quick sync with Palm or other such devices. Ironically no serial port as well so you just cannot sync up a Palm with out additional USB device purchase.
4. 512MB is the maximum. For developers this will limit them in the future.
5. Jog Dial pretty useless with W2K.
6. Poor sound quality, CD does not operate unless system is booted, no hardware volume control so you have to struggle to reduce/increase the volume by software means.
7. No standard floppy drive.
8. The beautiful display does not work with other machines.

In summary, do not confuse your need to own a 16inch LCD with your laptop needs.
My recommendation:
1. Buy a good LCD monitor for about $500.
2. Buy any small foot print laptop with similar config. If you are a Sony fan, other Vaio models would be fine.

If you still want this one, consider following accessories:
1. USB 32MB flash memory as alternative to floppy drive.
2. USB InfraRed and Serial Port.

Sony notebooks must be the most overpriced,overrated, and undersupported in the market, even by PC standards. The saddest thing about it is that Sony uses their software bundling as bait. Be warned, it worked on me, please don't let it happen to you. The PCG-GRX570 I bought has turned out to be the bane of my existence. First of all, I hadn't realized just how heavy and clunky the unit was until I received it. This is certainly not a portable unit if that's what you are looking for. Sony certainly wasn't kidding when they called it a desktop replacement as it will spend most of its life on your desktop unless you want to strain a few vertebra trying to carry it around (9-11 lbs incl. battery, but no accessories etc in that weight). Secondly, it is too noisy for something that was supposed to be top of the line. The CD/DVD drive can freak you out sometimes just by the sheer amount of noise. Some months after I got it (and towards the end of the limited warranty), I started getting a garbled screen that Sony was quite reluctant to fix. I got the sense that they were trying to delay me until the warranty expired. Anyway, after a lot of nagging on my part, they finally got it fixed though it took two service requests to do it after they just mucked around the first time round. The latest problem I have had with this notebook is that the same LCD screen has now gotten so dim that I cannot use the computer any more unless I attach it to an external monitor. All the tips in the troubleshooting guide and SonyIQ Knowledge Database have proved quite useless, as have the support staff at their online service. Don't bother with the online support people, they will only refer you to articles at the knowledge database which you can find unaided anyway. They are on the whole quite clueless, as is most of Sony's support staff. After pleading ignorance to what could be ailing this now glorified CPU and keyboard, the support people at Sony are now advising me to send it in to their less than stellar group at the service center in San Diego. The initial estimates for my repair job (now that the 1 year limited warranty has expired) is at least $700, and I am sure that it would be pushing $1500 by the time they are done. Personally, I am just going to use that money as seed money for next notebook computer, which will definitely not be a Sony. Fixing this Sony notebook is just not worth that amount of money.

This computer has everything you could possibly need, including a firewire port. Sony calls this the i.link (IEEE 1394), and it is through this you can connect your external hard drive, that is, if you can use up the 40 gigabytes that they already offer in the computer itself.

My only problem with the laptop is its sheer weight and size, but i guess that is something you have to deal with if you want to have an amazing 16.1" screen.

Sony specializes in making the cheapest possible products, giving them a snazzy exterior and then overcharging by an outrageous margin. Part of this strategy of ripping off a gullible public is to spend almost no money on support. For example, the SCREEN is not covered under the warrany. That is a full 50% or more of the value of the computer. This flimsy product with a poorly designed, akward keyboard, showed a crack in the screen within a few months of very light use (I am a Mac user mostly). This was without travel or injury of any kind. Guess what, warrantly doesnt cover this, because it couldnt be defective, cause its a Sony! I have had Sony camcorders, TVs, you name it. EVERY ONE WAS FLIMSY AND DEFECTIVE. That is the sony way.
Support America. Dont buy Sony! Support honesty, dont buy Sony!

I bought the 505dx after looking long and hard at the TR series, and ended up buying it because it had much the same features at a slightly lower price. So far, I'm glad I did. The 505dv is packed with memory (comes with 512, can be upgraded to 2 gigs) and a very fast processor for a computer this small (1.4 mhz pentium M). As someone else has noted, the video card has its own memory. The 505Dx really seems to be targeted at people who want to do digital video or media, hence the extremely large hard drive, relatively souped-up video card, and relatively large amount of memory capacity. It also comes with a large amount of media software preinstalled. Oddly, this model does not seem to have a DVD-writable drive available as an option.

The laptop itself is just under five pounds, and the casing seems strong and durable. It offers two USB 2.0 ports, which, trust me, you will appreciate when using peripheral devices. Other perks include built-in wireless networking and a memory stick slot.

Now the downside-the laptop does not have a very large range of available features-you can choose XP pro or home, 40-80GB hard drive, and more memory, but not much else is optional. This is common failing of laptops in general. As with most small laptops, the optical drive is built-in and can't be swapped out. The keyboard and mouse are hard to use and the mousepad in particular is not very sensitive (another common failing of laptops in general). The sound from the speakers is crappy, but laptop speakers always sound crappy. Get some external speakers or headphones.

Also, note that sony skimps on its warranties-mine came with only a one-year limited warranty for parts and service and 90-day free technical support. Sony really needs to take a lesson from Dell and offer greater warranty coverage, especially for laptops, which tend to be more fragile and abused.

In all, I think this computer is a great value for the money, particularly if you want something small and powerful with which to do music downloading and sharing.

This new laptop replaces a Toshiba A15-S127 that we bought 3 months ago and one that died 4 weeks later when the LCD screen cracked. This one still confuses my wife and me given that the thing spent most of its time in its carry case and it bore absolutely no external damage on the laptop's shell. To add insult to injury the store we bought it from wanted to charge us literally 2/3rds the cost of the thing to repair it, manufacturer's warranty be dammed, I guess. Suffice it to say that we won't be buying Toshiba products again nor shopping at this store (who's name, by the way, rhymes with Stomp Youse Say), ever again. I would have reviewed the S127, but what's the point? We hardly had it long enough to get to know it.

When Sony began producing computers, I was less than impressed. Yet another big name producing very shiny products that look great while using second rate parts that deliver underwhelming performance. That was several years ago and while I still don't care for big name brand PCs, they are still good machines. Even though I build my PCs from parts I choose, I can't build a lap top, and after the Toshiba debacle, anything would have been an improvement. Truth to tell, I didn't really like the Toshiba from the start, but my wife wanted something cheap to take to work and use it to learn Spanish, practice her mathematics and watch the occasional movie, and the Toshiba did a fair job at all of those things. The Sony PCG-505DX is a vast improvement in every category, though it was twice the price.

The 505 features a 1.5 Ghz Pentium 4 Centrino processor- possibly the most important consideration when buying a laptop these days. The CPU scales its speed and processing ability to conserve power and extend the usability of the lap top. With the full charge the 505 will run for nearly 5 hours when doing things like word processing. Obviously, the more things you do, the shorter the battery life will be. The Vaio also sports a whopping 512 mb of RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 16 mb of its own RAM, (a lot of laptops video RAM is actually shared with system RAM and performance takes a real hit), a 400 Mhz FSB, an 11 mb IEEE 802.11b 'Wi-fi' wireless network adapter, 1 PC-MCIA slot, 2 USB + 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire ports, CD-RW & DVD player combo drive, Network and modem ports, VGA port, and a Sony memory stick slot. All of this is packed into a very small and very attractive box,. The casing also has a lot of polished aluminum, which will no doubt enhance the durability and life of the computer.

Though the S127 was fully 600 Mhz faster, the 505 out performs it every category- it boots faster, loads programs faster, and came with much better software pre-installed. I actually plan to keep all of Sony's own music and video programs, which is odd as I usually spend the first day or so with any laptop I have owned blowing out all the junk and promotional software that comes with them. About the only things I removed was AOL and that really terrible office package known as Microsoft Works. Everything else will stay. Sony also wisely partitioned the 60 Gb hard drive to make mirroring the drive much easier. (What they didn't include was a system restore CD or DVD and instead require you to make your own. If you want to do this, make sure your have a stack of CD-Rs handy, because it will take 9 of them).

The 505 is actually pretty much the same size as my old 486 Compaq Aero, which itself was a dynamite little machine. I love the Vaio's design and feel- it's sturdy, incredibly well made and given the luck we have had with our other Sony products, I suspect this little beauty will be around for a long time. About the only real complaints I have about it is the speakers sound terrible, but then again, this is a laptop and a general gripe about laptop keyboards in general- I just can't get comfortable with any of them. This is the best laptop I have ever owned in both performance and build quality. The screen image quality is great, the keys and controls intuitive, I only wish we had bought this first instead of the Toshiba.

Running Windows XP Pro with every available patch and all the latest drivers, and this card crashes my system (infamous blue screen of death) several times each day. I had predicted that this card would be 100% compatible and very stable ... foolish wishful thinking on my part I guess.

I'm about to give up on this MN-720 and switch to the Lucent/Agere/Proxim Orinoco 11b card that I've been using for years without ANY problems.

I know this must be a driver issue, but I don't have the time or patience to pursue MS support for this, I'd rather just chalk it up to a loss and learn from the experience.

If you don't have time to waste troubleshooting, stay away from this card!!!

as my review on belkin card, this card is based on broadcom chip
and I found they have a common problem, that the signal goes down under heavy load (e.g. playing 1400k wav file over network, the signal drops, just not as bad as belkin)
if you're using mixed G or pure G, you may not able to connect due to 54g setting, the default is b only, and there's a simple fix: just change the 54g setting to b-compatible
and, if you'd like to get more stable performance when the signal is low, change the rate to 6Mbps, however, you may not be able to connect pure b network
the installation is easy, as USB version, just put the CD in, and you're ready to go
my personal suggestion, get MN-710 instead due to better bitrate and less hassle

This laptop wireless card has worked flawlessly. Easy setup instructions (install software first) and then install the card in your notebook. Excellent (54 MBPS) to good reception (36 MBPS) even at longest distance from access point. Not trying to offend anyone, some other review complained that its not compatible with a DLink router. First rule in wireless, never mix and match brands for your system. I also bought the base station, which was easy to setup. I enabled WPA security and MAC filtering without a hitch. One con - the manual tells you to enter a unique name for your SSID. Just enter 3 or 4 spaces for your name, there's no reason to broadcast any name, your wireless card will pick up all close range broadcasts and you just won't see any name, which is confusing to any one war driving or your neighbors.

Any other setup problems reported by previous reviews was easy to see that they are computer illiterate. Not their fault, just their lack of knowledge. I'm running Win XP with all the latest patches. To run WPA you must download the WPA patch on all computers associated with your devices. If you don't know what WPA is, then you shouldn't be using wireless.

This is a good card...and the base station is just as good, plus.....the price is very affordable.