Notebook Reviews

If you have problems with your flash drive ( like I did) don't count on any technical support. Lines are all automated and wait is always over 20 minutes for live support. Not to mention that it disconects you when it is done telling you this. PNY tech support is a joke.

PNY drive didn't work properly with either my Dell pc (Windows2000/plug&play) or Fujitsu laptop (Windows98/downloaded driver). PNY's tech support was especially unhelpful ("I don't know what to tell ya...must be your computer"). I then bought a Lexar flash drive, which continues to work perfectly on both pc and laptop.

This is a great USB flash drive. It works like a chrm and is quite faster than some other flash drives. Also no installation is required except for Windows 98 and 98SE. This is really good for storing just about everything. However this flash drive only lacks in tech support and size. However what I do like is it speed.(12MB/sec. = 720MB/min.)

I did not like that they did not give a price for the Sony Vaio PCG-FR130. That is to bad for them because i was interested in buying that modle but i guess i will go to another competetor.

At first sight, the FR-130 laptop endears itself easily: solid build, decent styling, nice LCD screen, and a wealth of hardware and software extras to sweeten the deal. Perhaps too many free multimedia software that few need or use.

BUT 2 months after owning a brand new one, my FR-130 touch pad (made by Alps) goes crazy and starts acting on its own: it moves independently of your finger motion, clicks to open and close apps, or just does not move at all. Problem persists even after downloading the latest driver from Alps/Sony (July 2003).

A quick Google search for "Alps Touch Pad Problem" reveals that it is a generic problem affecting many owners across many Sony models.

Disgusted with the Touch Pad, I just attach an USB mouse and the latter seems to work ok. But once in a great while, the mouse acts up just like the touch pad! By uninstalling the touch pad driver and the mouse driver, and then rebooting, things return to normal ... until the next time. Fortunately, the mouse is more stable than the touch pad, so in between crises, you can still use your FR-130 if you don't mind using a mouse in lieu of the touch pad. Perhaps the intermittency is due to poor heat dissipation.

I think Sony and Alps stink to high heavens for not resolving that issue. Other than that, the FR-130 is a capable laptop for most needs. For those who needs a laptop to do video editing annd related multimedia chores, Sony is the leader. If you can close your eyes to its idiotic touch pad.

Great deal for the money. The nVidia GeForce4Go 16meg video is a step up from the integrated video chipsets most budget laptops use, enough to play Quake 3 at 1024x768 res with full detail. The memory is easily upgradable, I added a second DIMM, both DIMM slots are unobstructed. Sony wisely divided the HD into two partitions, which allowed me to replace the second partition with Red Hat Linux without disturbing the factory WinXP Home installation. FYI, while I haven't been able to get power management to work under Linux, everything else that I've tried works. The only caveat is the 8 pound weight.

Note to Sony: I'd have purchased a more expensive notebook if an Athlon notebook with a larger screen, higher-end graphics chip, and what not had been available. I DO NOT BUY INTEL CHIPS! That said, it's probably just as well that I saved my money and went with this well-rounded desktop replacement.

Overall, a solid mid-level notebook capable of performing a wide variety of functions and multi-media applications. Unfortunately, the down side is a pretty big one: battery life is pretty pathetic. Don't count on more than 45 to 50 minutes playing a dvd on a fully charged battery. I've also had a few intermittent problems getting it to recognize photos stored on my Sony memory sticks, which is kind of ironic considering it's Sony's own proprietary memory storage medium.

Overall nice machine. I get about 2.5-3 full hours battery life, even while watching a DVD. Didn't come with any disks, so make sure you make your own when you first buy. Expensive batteries and AC power supplies.. few accessories. But the sceen/display is amazing! Well built, full of built-in features, and a pleasure to use. Again, the display is truely unsurpassed.

Could be better, but not at this price.

Sony makes good electronics what can I say..and everybody including myself has no problems with Vaios as far as bugs or what not...good computer.

I bought this case for my Jornada 540 and I found that the case is extremly big. Even there is a place to hold 2 extra battery these are useless for my Jornada, but they can be used for a pen.

Anyway the case protect my pocket PC and that's the major issue of this product.

Well-made case, very good materials and workmanship. It is very large for a Palm or Visor, but it's a perfect fit for the iPaq with the CF card sleeve, which many cases won't accomodate.

Five stars for materials, finishing, and handcrafted-like style.
Four or even less if you consider it as a case for your Jornada or Palm. It is enormous! YouÂ'll have to wrap your device to adapt it into the case.
But if you have a Targus Stowaway keyboard, youÂ'll be glad to protect it with this case. It is perfect for that accessory.
Jornada users: try to get a Copilot case instead to dress your P/PC.

The laptop looks cool, and it is light enough to carry around for a long time. But I am very disappointed after I bought one and tried it. It generates too much heat too quickly compared to similar models from other vendors (e.g., IBM T41). In addition, I am not sure that SONY tested the port replicators thoroughly. The port replicators do not support fast Ethernet connection well. When you connect the replicator to a LCD monitor, you do not get video on the monitor when you play video files using real-player.

I won't not buy any VAIO laptop computers in the future. It sucks!

Great hardware but daddy sony pushes you around with its choices. It starts with a disk formatted only like they want, overflowing with sony useless utilities. It seems impossible to reconfigure it and if you ask them they tell you to keep quiet that they know better than you what you want. Don't even bother to ask to install win2000 you are so used to and know already, it's impossible, the needed drivers are not available.
The best is that it doesn't come with a recovery CD, if you want it you have to purchase it from sony at 25$

While it's true that the Z1WA does not come with a recovery CD, and that Sony will supply you one for $25, it comes with a utility to create your own set of (9) recovery CDs. Unfortunately, the utility to make them is a little brain-damaged. It's supposed to keep a taskbar icon available until you create a set, but looking at it and cancelling makes it go away. Looking and cancelling is also enough to make it force you to reboot with no way to avoid it (beyond letting the "OK to Reboot" dialog languish in the background). It'd be more convenient, for sure, if Sony just spent the $2 to include a set of recovery CDs, but you don't have to spend $25 if you don't want to.

One of my main complaints so far is that the filesystem as shipped is horribly fragmented, making the computer quite slow. Make sure you defrag as soon as possible. It speeds up the computer tremendously. Again, I'm surprised Sony didn't fix this in the factory.

Another complaint is the keyboard. The keys are quite flat and a little hard to touch-type on. Also, the right shift key is the same size as a regular letter key, making it hard to use. Sony should have made the arrow keys smaller and extended the shift to be a double-wide key as it should be, but that's moot now.

Also, it comes with C: (14GB) and D: (37GB) drives from the factory, which seems silly. I suppose it might make it easier to recover, but I haven't tried that yet. But it'd make more sense to me to have the one hard drive have only one letter so that you had only one chance to run out of drive space, not two.

Also, it does come with a lot of utilities that aren't the most helpful. Norton Internet Security seems like too much of a mother hen. Norton Anti-Virus is a 3-month trial, as is Office. I'm sure there are more of these utilities that are doing nothing more than wasting drive space, but I've only had it for about 12 hours now.

The lid can be a little hard to open, too, especially with one hand. There's no latch, just a spring holding it closed and it's a litte tight. It might loosen up with use, though.

Having ClearType font smoothing on as default would probably have made sense, too, but it wasn't.

Other than these quibbles, though, I'm quite happy with the computer. It's quite light, has a nice high-resolution screen (which others with worse sight might find a detriment), looks sexy (especially after you take off the at least six stickers), and performs well. I'm happy.

I purchased two fans after I thought the first one broke after it stopped working. Shortly after I plugged in the second one, it stopped working also. I went to the Kensington site and searched for a technical support reason. They state at their web site that the fan will "stall" if its motor gets hot and you might need to reboot the computer to get it working again. Even rebooting the computer doesn't get the fan working again 9 times out of 10. I believe that having a fan stall when it is hot and allowing this to be an acceptable design charaacteristic is ridiculous. Isn't the point of having a fan to increase air flow and cool ? Now the owner of two defectively designed fans, I am very negative on this fan and this company for accepting the defect and selling it knowingly.

I like it a lot. Great for laptop and its got a flexible neck. Only issue might be the slight noise it creates. Haven't tested the battery drain yet. Recommended for laptop owners.

I work in a room that is pretty cramped and has no HVAC (temporary space) and this fan is EXCELLENT!! It's a clever, useful little gimmick.

very disapointed by this computer, the hard drive is so slow, it's a drag.
I miss my old Dell.
If course, they never mention when you buy the Sony laptop that the disk is a slow RPM.
Stay away.
stephan.

when I first ordered this computer I thought that it was going to fit all of my needs. One of which is being able to carry it from place to place, which is not posible because it weighs in at just
under eleven pounds, and when you factor in the bag which you have to carry it in because you definitly dont want to break such an expensive computer it weighs about seventeen pounds. For your own satisfaction get another computer.

This is basically another 'GRT 170' laptop, except it's about $400 more for this model. With the '64MB of dedicated video memory', this thing should plow through any software like a 'German Panzer Tank'. Any 'laptop' or 'desktop', make sure it has 'dedicated video memory', not the cheap 'shared (integrated) video memory'. If you get 'shared', you'll be sorry. Again, this is a quality buy, a little on the expensive side, but the quality is there.

This notebook is out of date and is way out classed by rivals in the same price range.

What I don't like:
SDRAM? Most notebooks in this price range offer DDR-SDRAM. DDR transmits twice the data with each clock, making it much faster. SDRAM has been abandoned.

1.3 GHz Athlons: They run hot and lack SSE-2. SSE-2 is a feature built into current Intel and future AMD CPUs. If you don't have it, software that uses it will run slower. This includes major products like Windows, Adobe, and many games.

ATI RAGE MOILITY graphics chipset? Very old news with almost no 3D features. Notebooks that cost 30% less are at least offering the ATI Radeon M6-P or even ATI 7500 chipsets.

If this notebook was half the price I could endorse it. At this price it is highway robbery. Either look at Toshiba, HP, Gateway or Dell, or move up the Sony price range into one of their newer P4 based notebooks. I'm sure this left over is about to be discontinued.

I've had this notebook computer for just under 2 years and in that time it has been nothing but problems. It constantly locks up and runs much hotter than any other laptop I've ever had. It has crappy speakers,it's sound is intermittent and the restore function does not always work. I've had to reformat the hard drive 9 times since owning it and now the monitor no longer works. Sony charges insane prices for it's repair as well as it's accesories. I've always used it as more of a desktop so hooking it up to an external monitor is an acceptable although irritating solution for the monitor problem. It won't however change the fact that this is a lousy piece of machinery.

I have had this laptop for about 10 months now. It's very heavy when you add the second battery. I have gone to a rolling laptop case for travel as my shoulder couldn't take the weight.

I added third party memory to bring it up to 512MB, I'm on my third module. I think the heat killed the others. Luckily I bought the lifetime warrenty, so it's all been free replacements. I recommend a laptop cooler as it gets very hot.

I have been using it to capture minidv from my dvcamcorder. I scan tape and capture unattended. It works flawlessly. For this use I highly recommend this laptop.

Overall, I like the computer, only draw backs are weight, and slow performance compared to other laptops I have used in the same class.

We have a house full of Sony products - computers, monitors, TVs, DVDs, even an original Walkman that still works. I never thought twice about buying Sony notebooks, a PCG-GRZ610 for my wife the author, and a PCG-GRZ630 for my son going off to college. Now a little more than a year later both are having serious problems overheating. They shut down without warning after 30 - 60 minutes of work. Won't burn a CD without shutting down. It didn't take much time in the Amazon reviews to find out that MANY Sony users are having the same problems. Search for "Sony shutdown problem" in Google and see for yourself.

Sony's support is terrible. Their phone rings in India. I'm OK with that, but the staff reads prepared text from their monitors and avoids all questions about overheating. Standard reply: "Reinstall the factory software." Out-of-warranty phone "support" costs $20.

Save yourself some frustration. Buy a Dell, Compaq, or Toshiba notebook untill you can verify that Sony has resolved this problem.

In buying a new notebook computer, I had three criteria: I wanted a 15 inch monitor, a processor speed of at least 2 GHz, and a price under [$]. Only a handful of computers satisfy all three of these criteria, and ultimately it came down to a choice between the Vaio and the Toshiba Satellite (2410/2415), which cost virtually the same but have slightly different features. I have used many laptops over the years, and the Vaio has significant plusses and minuses in comparison with other notebooks I've used.

The Vaio has a slim, compact design, a very bright and clear display, and a very nice full-sized keyboard. It has 32 MB of video memory (compared with 16 for the Satellite), and it handles graphics-intensive tasks with ease (I'm not a high-end gamer, though, and I doubt that this computer would be sufficient for that purpose). It is pleasant to use and it has some decent built-in tutorials to help you navigate the many multimedia applications. The Satellite is a little more "chunky" looking and the display did not look as sharp or as bright when I saw the two computers side by side.

The Vaio does have some limitations. Whereas the Toshiba Satellite has a "mobility" processor (designed for a laptop, it runs at a lower temperature and requires less cooling), the Vaio has a standard Pentium 4 processor. As a consequence, the fan operates continuosly with the Vaio, and if you are doing anything processor-intensive, the fan becomes quite loud. In a quiet room, such a library or office, it would be clearly audible for 30 or 40 feet at top speed. It is much louder than the fan on any notebook computer I've ever used. When operating normally (for example, doing low-demand tasks such as word processing) it is not unusually loud. The fan can be switched to a "quiet" mode although I believe that this also slows the processor speed. Surprisingly, there are no external controls for playing CDs. On the Toshiba (and most notebooks I've used), you can play CDs and adjust the volume using controls on the exterior of the case, without turning on the computer. With the Vaio, you can't. Also, the Vaio does not come standard with a 3.5 inch floppy drive. I almost never use floppies, but sometimes they are just the only convenient way to get a file onto your computer. Both the Toshiba and the Vaio come with three USB ports; in the case of the Toshiba they are USB 1.1. I believe that they are USB 2.0 on the Vaio, although I am not certain of that.

A limitation of both computers is that they use the "touch pad" pointing device. I had one of these on my last computer and I hated it from day one. They are just not accurate enough for long-term use and clicking the right mouse button is very cumbersome. The IBM-style "pencil eraser" pointing device is a much better mouse substitute for a notebook computer and I wish that more computers would adopt something similar. I usually use a plug-in external mouse so it's not a huge problem for me, but if you frequently need to operate the computer in cramped conditions or where you do not have a desk or hard surface on which to use an external mouse, consider buying an IBM for the pointing device. Also, the battery life on both of these computers is relatively short.

The Vaio packs a lot of power and features into a relatively low price. It is a good computer for people who need to be able to take their work with them but who are usually able to sit down at a desk and plug in the AC power and an external mouse. Because of the touch pad, the short battery life, the lack of a mobility processor, and the lack of a floppy drive, it is probably not the best for someone who needs maximum mobility and flexibility.

I was very, very wary of purchasing this computer due to the claims of excessive fan noise described here on Amazon. However, after checking it out at the store thoroughly, I found the fan noise to be no big deal and went ahead with my purchase.

The fan is loudest when changing rpms, and for a few moments it can be pretty annoying. However I found the fan noise overall to be pretty negligible. The CD/DVD rom drive, I found could be much, much louder though, especially when combined with the fan. This was, to my suprise, more of am issue when using cds and cd-roms than with DVDs, which ran relatively quietly.

Conclusion: The fan makes a cooling-fan sound. If you are used to laptops that do not have fans (some macs, for example), or completely silent ones, this may be an issue. Under normal operation (not in 'silent' mode) I found the grz610 fan noise to be very tolerable and not a disturbance to those around me.

Otherwise:

Performance: Very good. However, I think that this system will benefit from the addition of 256MB RAM under windows XP.

Design: Large - nice, big screen, but this laptop did not fit into my carrying sleeve, so buy a big one. Heavy - this is a beefy laptop, and if you are toting the AC adapter as well, you will definitely be feeling it.

Software extras: The usual bunch of bundled software which I ritualistically delete and replace with professional versions.

Other: I thought the speakers actually sounded pretty good for a laptop.

Overall satisfaction: Very good. I'd give it 4.5 stars if they would let me, but it is better than 4, so I give it a 5.

This is not a wallet with a place to put money, as the picture shows shows. Also, the card slots are oriented vertically, instead of horizontally.

It perfectly fit my palm but I expected it to have a section for your cash.

I received the iten not only in perfect conditions but also quite fast.

Thanks dudes!