Notebook Reviews

I have used one of these sport-belt cases for my thrice-weekly trips to the gym for several years now, and overall, I have been pleased. The best feature of this case is that it is roomy, and includes generously sized extra pockets along the belt. I have to carry keys, a small padlock, change, and extra batteries during my trips to my workout, in addition to the cd player, my Etymotic earphones, and an extra cd, so the roominess of these belt pockets is welcome.

I have noticed complaints by other reviewers regarding poor stitching leading to breakage. This surprises me, as I have had no such problems. However, I think that people would be wise NOT to put the cd player itself in the outside compartment (as shown in the illustration), as this area is contained only by light netting. The stitching along this netting might well be more prone to breakage. I always put the player in the innermost pocket, leaving the outside pocket for extra cd's only.

My only real complaint about this product is that over time, the belt itself tends to wrinkle badly, and there is no good way to flatten it out (since it's nylon, it's not a good idea to iron the thing). This is not really a major problem, however.

When I work out at the gym, I love to listen to my CD player. But, like most weightlifters, I can be very hard on my equipment, therefore I require something durable and also very functional. The solution is the Case Logic CD Sports Pack. Here's a great pouch that not only neatly carries your CD player, there's also room to carry 3 CDs (a must for those who buy double CDs or box sets), a zipper pocket for keys, batteries, or small change. Plus, the waistband can be fastened comfortably and holds your equipment in place. It carries everything in one small, compact bag, and the price makes it an irresistible bargain.

I've been using this pack since day 1. I've used it hundreds of times for the gym and my hiking excursions and I've never had one single problem. It's pockets are roomy for extra carry along CD's, batteries, or fold-up headphones. The side pockets are ideal for a few keys or some spare cash. Definitely worth it.

Unlike the others I have never had a problem with using the outside netting for holding my CD player. One thing it is not built for is jogging. So avoid it if you think it's good for that. Being made of nylon makes it ideal for outdoor conditions that I need for it and it stores great in my car and gym bag.

For only $20 you can't lose out really.

My main gripe about this mouse is that it is somewhat picky about what surfaces it will work with. I have other optical mice that work fine on my standard grey desk; however, the Kensington Optical Pocketmouse just won't work on that surface. It will work on mousepads and many wood surfaces, however. It's a decent mouse otherwise, but I expect more versatility from a device designed for travel.

This is a nice little mouse. Large enough to use, but small enough to hide in the corner of your shoulder bag. It doesn't look like the white mouse pictured, but I don't mind - it's better, translucent with its red glow. The only gripe I have is that I don't seem to be able to customize the behavior of the scroll wheel, and its default behavior is to scroll a tiny bit (too little) in individual clicks, but large bits (too large) when scrolled more quickly.

I used to have problem with this mouse for the first year: it won't work on the light color mouse pad, the point is always un-steable,..... just SO Hard to control! We tried to install the driver, clean the exterior, change the mouse pad with dark color background..... It just won't work. My husband gave one last try by downloading the driver from their web site, and, this time, it WORKS!! My problem solved! This mouse has been like a pro ever since!! Steable, Sharp, and easy to control!

I like the horizontally oriented case. It has two compartments, one for the camera, and one for extra battery and/or memory. THE CLIP IS CHEAPLY MADE, plastic which doesn't accept handsome torque without showing stress cracks and breaking, and WORSE, the black plastic clip is held in place by a small pitiful metal pin. WORST OF ALL is that the clip handle jabs a large man in the belly from the belt...not ergonomically designed. I have a much cheaper case which is better designed and more functional, and won't break if I accidently press the case agains a chair arm, or bump it hard getting in the car. I would not have bought it if I had held it in my hands before purchase. I recommend you shop around for something that doesn't have a cheap plastic clip which is held in place by a cheap ugly piece of wire.

I find the camera fits perfectly in the case and there is decent cushioning to protect the camera. The draw back with this case is the front pocket which is to hold extra battery/memory card is way too big and doesn't hold the extra battery in place. Every time I open the case to remove the camera the battery falls out. If I had known this prior to purchasing the case I would have gotten a different one.

I find that the camera fits perfectly in the case. The case is compact and has decent cushion for protection. They only bad thing is the front pocket which is for extra battery/memory card is too big. The extra battery I put in mine is always falling out when I open the case to take out the camera. If I had known this before I purchased it I would not have bought it.

I purchases a product similar to this one and was involved in an accident where my head was whipped forward and I sustained serious injuries to my forehead and scalp when the CD's sliced me like a knife along my forehead from ear to ear. My scalp was seperated from my skull all the way to the crown of my head. I was in surgery for several hours while they stitched my scalp back together. I also lost all feeling from the cut along my forehead to the crown of my skull due to the nerve endings being ripped from the scalp.

It has been over a year since the accident and I still have no feeling on my head.

I urge everyone to think twice before purchasing any type of CD holder that wraps around your car visor.

I purchases a product similar to this one and was involved in an accident where my head was whipped forward and I sustained serious injuries to my forehead and scalp when the CD's sliced me like a knife along my forehead from ear to ear. My scalp was seperated from my skull all the way to the crown of my head. I was in surgery for several hours while they stitched my scalp back together. I also lost all feeling from the cut along my forehead to the crown of my skull due to the nerve endings being ripped from the scalp.

It has been over a year since the accident and I still have no feeling on my head.

I urge everyone to think twice before purchasing any type of CD holder that wraps around your car visor.

I just bought this CD holder, and there is NO WAY that CDs can come flying out of it. The pockets are deep (there's only a sliver of the CD's edge showing) and very tight. I re-read the review(s) by that one guy with the horror story, and noticed he wrote that he owned a holder "similar" to this one.

Let me repeat what I said above: the CDs will NOT come out of the visor pockets unless you take them out!

Now to the nitty gritty: I gave four stars only because it's impossible to tell one CD from another without taking them out (remember, the pockets are deep). If there were some kind of labeling system, that would help.

The picture above is of the visor when you're not using it. The closure has velcro. What you do is open the closure, and turn the visor essentially inside out. You take the part that is shown above with the tab that closes over the main bdy of the thing, and stick it up through the opening behind your car's visor. Now what you'll have is a storage area for CDs on either side of the car visor. The velcro holds the holder in place nice and tight. If you are even remotely worried about CDs coming out, stick them in the 10 pockets that are on the side of the visor that fits flush against the car roof, and no worries.

The Athlon XP1800+ cpu is very fast and 256mb DDR memory is quite adequate when run on all pre Windows XP systems (we have it on others),....but when combined with Win XP this system is left without resources to be of any productive value. Windows XP and the provided Office XP trial combined to use sufficient memory resources as to prevent an excel spreadsheet from opening in less than 2 minutes and then in processing it in less than 4 minutes. In comparision, these applications will take 1/3 as long on an identically prepared Windows 98SE system. The system runs times equivalent to an old Presario 450mhz P3 192mb (non ddr) system with Windows 98SE that we have here. We ran 500 timed tests in various Compaq suggested setting. Variances were in the single digits. IE: No gain.

Having no floppy drive is a little scary as well, as the CD does not act as a true boot drive, without performing some software and possibly BIOS changes as to how the system sees the CDRW drive. Compaq does not authorize this.

You are in the cradle (read that as grasp)of mother Compaq here. Don't think you can wonder off and add or remove or reinstrall as technology changes. Drivers are generally unavailable for the components unless Compaq posts them. Hardware manufacturers website driver updates won't generally be acceptable, if they can be found at all.

Support is generally vague and evasive, and of little use unless you have a lot of time on your hands to try and try and again. If you ask the same question enough times, you eventually get a support "specialist" that will answer "your" question inlieu of giving you the cut and paste generally nonrelavent response.

The price "was" right, but the price of the frustration can outweigh the savings. If you need a toy, buy it, but not at the current prices (you'll feel violated when you find that they went for under $ in December). If you need to be productive...add $ for the necessary memory to allow it to run serious applications.

If you have the nerve and the patience, Compaq does provide drivers and patches for Win2000 for this model. However you will loose the warm and fuzzy buttons and Compaq "officer friendly" screens.

As the story goes, in notebooks, the price and the performance do generally go hand in hand. We have no others to recommend, but based on our tests and lack of knowledgeable support, this one gets the award for the least bang for the buck, and the most frustration per minute we have run into lately.

Its not 1.5" thick, its like 1.75". And more than 6.5lbs. ...P>Its a desktop replacement mobile athlon, not the real mobile athlon. There is a big price difference between the types and you can see more on AMD's website. ...P>Not to mention that it runs very hot. Its not a fault of the Athlon which runs at 600MHz most of the time but a bad design by Compaq. The northbridge from ATI is too hot and so are the RAM modules. RAM get scorching hot and would burn your lap. Compaq couldn't even design proper cooling for this?

The laptop hard drive is very noisy and so is the flimsy keyboard. Think carefully before getting this. Not worth unless you get tons of rebates ...

its very easy to install and xp makes all setup work. dvd and cd burner work fine. displasy is sharp and clear. i use it with a mouse cause im not very fan of touchpad pointing device. it comes with 2 usb port too, so u can attach any device.

Having to read some of the reviews of this card, I have some comments to say. Like one reviewer said "it beats the Intel Extreme graphics" was just totally funny. Of course GeForce FX 5200 beats the Intel graphics. Intel graphics are integrated graphics chip which usually comes with cheap computers with no AGP slots. They will hardly play any games other than older based games like Starcraft, Counter Strike, and Dos games and few more. Just note that this card is definitly have if you have a Intel Extreme graphics 1 or 2. Also, one reviewer mentioned to get games that says "This is the way it ment to be played" or something closed to it but that is incorrect. Most ATI cards will beat Nvidia cards in frames per seconds. I like Nvidia cards too, just that ATI cards are just better. If you don't believe me or accept the truth, just read PCgamers magazines or read real online reviews of (not customers) real electronic webistes or something. Still, don't worry if you do have a Nvidia card. Doom 3 and Painkiller supports Nvidia cards. Though Splinter Cell runs better on ATI Radeons. I probably wrote too much not about the card but about other reviewer's review. It probably didn't help much about this card but at least now you know that ATI cards are better.

This card is good for decent games but not games like Battlefield Vietnam or Splinter Cell Pandorra Tomorrow. You should get Geforce TI 4200 or Radeon 9200 for little more price.

This graphics card is only so-so but don't get me wrong. I quite like this card but a bit dissapointed for its' performance. I got this card for only $70 dollars on eBAY and it is pretty good for its price. But the dissapointment came to me when I found that this card was running slower than my older card, GeForce 4 Ti 4800. GeForce FX 5200 card was newer so I thought it would have run better than my GeForce 4 Ti 4800 on games like Unreal Tournament 2003, Battlefield 1942, or Call of Duty but every game looked much better on GeForce 4 Ti 4800 than on GeForce FX 5200. So I was wondering if I got the wrong card. Then I went to the Nvidia website for technical help and I saw the descriptions of the cards and GeForce 4 Ti 4800 happen to be better than GeForce FX 5200. Heck, my Geforce 4 Ti 4800 was even faster than GeForce FX 5500! So I put the GeForce FX 5200 card on my brother's computer since his computer had no video card and I kept my computer unopened with my dated but better performing GeForce 4 Ti 4800. It is a pretty good card for its' price but I recommend you to pay $10 more to buy GeForce 4 Ti 4800 on Ebay. Oh yeah, I can't forget to mention this but it's also kind of noisy but those problems aside, this is a nice card to have.

This is not a *hard-core* gamers card -- look elsewhere, pay more. I had this card for about a year, no hardware problems or conflicts. I'm using a dual boot system: Win2K and WinXP, works fine switching between the two OSes. For the price (under $100), I get decent performance for general purpose applications, including Photoshop 7, PowerPoint, etc.

It provides 2 VGA ports. This is good only if you want to hook up 2 monitors. I would have prefered a VGA, S-Video and DVI ports. (Note: the new model now comes with VGA & S-Video ports.)

I know Vaio's have a good name overall. But the FRV31 does not live up to the Sony name. The performance of the 2.4GHz Celeron processor is slower than a 1.8GHz Celeron proc on a desktop system. Oh, and the advertising material on this model is incorrect in saying the processor has 512kb of L2 cache. It only has 128kb of L2 cache. But, that's not the worst part.

The battery life is only 50 - 55 minutes, tops! That's without any thing else connected to it. Sony's repair center kept my laptop for a few days, they said they ran some battery tests which all passed. Returned my laptop without any repair saying no problem found; must be a software issue. Of course, it still only runs for 50 mins before battery runs out.

Have called Sony since then, only to find out that they only warranty batteries for 30 days. They recommend that I purchase another battery. NO way, a customer should have to spend [more money]on some thing that should be under warranty. Based on my experience, I would recommend you spend your money some where else. So far, I've found FRV31 to be a sub-standard product and a Sony support team which is NOT willing to resolve the problem.

Weights a lot.
Does`t heat except on bed.
Comes with a lot of programs, mayority are 30 day trials.
Cero cables,only with one aol cd, and one manual.
The computer freezed only once.
Has norton antivirus 2003 and it sucks.
There is a $100 rebate for this laptop on internet and i have never seen the refund.
Problem detection with fellowes usb mouse.
Hard drive is 37.26gb says win xp.
No floopy!!!
Ati videocard(64mb of vid memory,can be hacked to get 128mb). Battery doesn`t last more than one hour.
Has a hidden partition with the installation programs.
It takes some time to load.
I tried to buy a better battery, but this laptop does`t exist anywhere, no one has heard of this laptop, can`t find the brand of it`s internal components or serial numbers.Almost impossible to buy parts for this laptop.So take good care of it.
The only good thing: it comes with one game and real player basic.

I recently purchased this vaio frv31 at a electronics superstore. i purchased it for $1199.00 with a total of $450.00 in rebates which brought the price down to $749.00 wow what a deal. Everyone complains that the hard drive is not really 40 Gig,but only 32 gig. i found out that it really is 40 gig if you go into control panel, then administrative tools, then computer management, then storage , then disk management you will see not 2 partitions but actually 3 partitions, the partition that is invisible is the files that are used to make the vaio restore disc's, so people that know nothing about computers should not make a statement that is not true, sure the processor is a little slow but then again most people that buy laptop's already have a fast desktop to do all the things that the laptop can't, i know i do. the only 2 complaints i have are no modular bay for a second battery or an internal floppy, there is space for a floppy if you pry off the cover just behind the pcmcia slots, i would like to put in an internal floppy but have not been able to locate one so if anyone has info email me at pickupmanf150@yahoo.com asap. other than that for $749.00 i think i got a real good deal

I recently bought this accessory for my S400. I didn't buy it from Amazon, but I should have since it's cheaper here. I was so excited to test it to make sure it doesn't leak before I put my expensive camera in it. I read the manual and filled the WP-dc800 with toilet paper for a test. I then stuck the camera housing into a sink full of water and let it soak for a while. I pressed all the well-built little buttons and levers underwater to make sure that every seal was water tight. When I took the item out and inspected it, everything checked out ok and the toilet paper was dry as a bone, just like I want my camera when I take this thing snorkeling later this summer. They ask a little much for this accessory and they don't offer any type of warranty with it at all. They warn you enough times in the manual not to let even a strand of hair interrupt the waterproof seal or it may leak on your camera, but they never tell you what to do if this item is faulty and floods your precious camera inside. I doubt Ill have any issues with it and it stood up to my tests at home. The WP-DC800 appears to be a solid product. I like how the buttons perfectly align to the buttons on the S400. Every feature is accessible while the housing is on your camera except, of course, removing the battery or CF card. The lens is double plated, anti-condensation glass. It attracts fingerprints like a magnet though. IT also comes with some sealant goop, a wrist strap and a cool Canon neck strap that shows the world how eccentric you are with your digital camera housing.
What I don't like about the WP-DC800 is the large part on the front that makes the item more huge than it has to be. This is for the added diffuser plate feature for your flash. It makes the WP-DC800 seems a little bulky
What I dont like about the WP-DC800 is the large part on the front that makes the item more huge than it has to be. This is for the added diffuser plate feature for your flash. It makes the WP-DC800 seems a little bulky. The realease to open the unit is a little hard to open. There is a push button that you hold while pulling on the top. I always fear that I might break the thing, but at least there is no worry that it will open underwater.

I was a little scared to try this out after reading some of the horror stories posted around the 'net about it leaking. . . .

Well, just to be on the safe side, we got some insurance for our new S500, then stuck it in this housing and took it on multiple dives over a week.

I'm happy to report that it worked flawlessly!!!

Now I just need to save up for an underwater strobe. . . . .

I am an experienced scuba diver with some experience in underwater photography. I bought this housing on a lark, because I had the camera and wanted something small to take along when I wasn't diving for photography but wanted to take some snaps.

*WITH THE PROPER PRECAUTIONS AND CHECKS* I found this case worked and was easy to use. I definitely recommend it.

The warning is:
* TAKE THE PROPER PRECAUTIONS
* MAKE THE PROPER PRE-DIVE CHECKS
* YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN
* GET FLOODING INSURANCE OR DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES

I was advised from the beginning to take a course on underwater camera maintenance and use, and to get flooding insurance. I still accept that despite my best efforts, I'll get flooding. The insurance will protect me. You *cannot* assume that a manufacturer will warranty an underwater housing against leakage. It's not possible. Even a tiny bit of sand on an O-ring can cause a leak, and at 60 feet the leak will let in water at twice atmospheric pressure.

Fancy underwater housings for $1000+ cameras are *not* warranted against flooding. Don't expect that a $170 housing will be. Don't blame manufacturers for your complete lack of knowledge and experience in a very specialized photographic discipline that most divers take years to learn.

Get flooding insurance. Learn how to protect your camera. Test the housing. Ask other divers.

The only possible limitation is that the rated depth is only 100 feet. But considering this housing is only $170, and an Ikelite pro-level housing is $500+, this little gem is a great deal.

Tried this in a Dell Inspiron 4000 and it would not work. Dell states PC133 will not work in the Insprion 4000. PNY tech support states this memory is NOT BACKWORD COMPATIBLE, despite the claims made by other reviewers.

I used the PNY 256MB PC133 SODIMM in my old IBM ThinkPad i1400 series laptop which said only took PC66 memory, but it was obviously backwards compatable and so now my laptop has 512MB in it. The PNY memory was easy to install and works great.

what i was looking for was a PC100 256mb memory upgrade ... Thankfully my laptop accepted this PC133 sodimm and has been performing beautifully ever since. i now intend to add another 256mb.

Battery life: 30 minutes doing nothing
Tech support says this is normal!
What?
YES, they say this is normal. Now I Know they have no sense.
What can you possibly acomplish in 30 minutes on a laptop, assuming you are doing something productive. Forget about using this laptop in the airport.
The poorest, most sorry, stupid, neanderthal tech support on the planet.
Opposite of a Toyota product, wish they made a laptop.

I purchased my PCG-FXA32 nearly two years ago, when they were offering the free 256MB RAM upgrade. It's served me well. It does not feel sluggish compared to other notebooks running WinXP. The screen is crisp and clear -- there aren't many notebooks at this price with a 15" screen. Mine has been rock-solid, never crashing unless I've put it to sleep with my wi-fi pc card installed (hibernate works fine.)

Sony would like to sell this model as a video editing platform (it does include a FireWire port.) Their software works ok, but with only 15GB of hard drive space, an upgrade there is in order unless you're just making short videos for the web or something.

Overall, a good notebook, and a great value.

I purchased this Laptop in December, I have had a couple before this and I decided to go with a Sony. The computer is pretty good, there is 2 things that I have problems with....

1. The processor does not know how fast it is...It ranges between 550 to 900mhz.

2. The mouse like to stall for a second or two..which is kinda annoying...

other than that this computer is not that bad...I am goin to try an Athlon or Pentium 3...in a Sony brand...but like I said before...this does the job O.K.