The Laptop review (Entries tagged as sony)

Sony VAIO NS20E laptop - a sprinkle of style and sense

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:59:53 +0100

The Sony VAIO NS20 is a basic laptop from Sony VAIO which offers a refreshing sparkle of style and features to an otherwise rather dull budget laptop market.

Sony VAIO NS series

For just £450-500 you get solid laptop with a slim profile for good looks and portability. Its smooth rounded corners and edges give the VAIO NS an elegant and attractive feel. Gentle curves also keep exterior dimensions to a minimum and ensure that this laptop is really easy to slip into a bag or carrying case.

Excellent picture quality
With a good-size 15.4” widescreen display, the VAIO NS allows you to fully appreciate your multimedia entertainment without compromising portability.

Sony "X-black" LCD technology ensures images are bright and sharp for truly realistic and natural-looking pictures. I had never seen this in action an took it for a simple branding excersise but the intense contrast and colours bring multimedia files to life vividly on screen and it stacks up well compared to a price-competitive Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Its anti-reflective coating minimizes glare to allow enjoyment of movies, games and photo slideshows outside in the garden as well as from a wide variety of viewing angles.

Good connectivity
The VAIO NS also features a wide variety of connections including Sony's i.LINK™ for digital camcorders, a VGA (ie analogue) port which is good for most projectors an ExpressCard 34mm slot for memory cards, the laptop also accepts MemoryStick as you'd expect. Some models also featue an S-Video output for connecting up your laptop to a TV.

Solid hardware
It's well built for a budget laptop, with the kind of quality you'd expect from Sony. Its Intel Core Duo processor and 3Gb DDR2 RAM copes well with Vista and runs standard Office Suite software with ease.

And so this is where the mini-review should end. We've used them and we think they cope well with the demands of Vista Home Premium, offering a very pleasant user experience. Girls should keep their eyes open for the stunning pink models!

Silly software - but sound multimedia all round
Proprietary Sony VAIO software uses built-in intelligence to make simple work of organising rapidly growing – and potentially chaotic – collections of music and digital photos and video clips. VAIO Music Box uses a powerful ’12 Tone Analysis’ system to categorise music into different genres and moods, then automatically builds playlists that you can select to match the moment (hmm...).

VAIO Movie Story takes the work and complexity out of managing photos and video by vastly simplifying the task of arranging your pictures, adding effects and judicious editing to show them at their best, then synching the images to music. The result is a quality slideshow to enjoy and share – a long way from the original mass of pictures on the hard disk.

Sony’s trademark quality and attention to detail is evident wherever you look, from the X-black LCD enhanced screen to the clear tone of the integrated speakers and the provision of four USB ports for maximum connectivity. Along with the peace of mind that comes with the global status of the brand, this makes the VAIO NS hard to beat in its class.

Sony VAIO NS Series laptops at Cheap Laptops

Blu Ray Sony VAIO under £1000

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:19:11 +0000

Sony's digital entertainment laptop with a Blu-ray disc drive, HDMI connectivity, high powered processor and an incredibly large hard drive. This small laptop is a multimedia special, ideal for watching high resolution Blu-Ray DVDs (not surprisingly being pushed by Sony) which are higher resolution that standard DVDs and in competition with High Definition (HD). The WXGA (Widescreen high resolution) screen and huge hard drive reflect its multimedia capabilities - although bear in mind it isn't stricly (err.. at all) legal to rip a DVD onto the large hard drive!

Other than the fancy features the memory is generous - 2 Gb of very fast DDR2 667 MHz RAM. That's even enough to run Vista - which you might aswell get used to because it's going to be standard soon enough - and to tinker with 5 mb photos from your 10 Megapixel Sony digital camera. Speaking of cameras, this cheaper than usual premium Sony laptop has the obligatory MemoryStick drive.

A dual core processor ticks another box, although pretty standard these days. It does, whoever have an 800MHz FSB - this means it is free from a common bottleneck when communicating with the rest of your computer.

One for the desk drawer or young professional's IKEA room plan. Not half bad for under £1,000 inc VAT.

Here's the spec: Sony VAIO Intel Core 2 Duo T7300

15.4 WXGA
2GB RAM
Huge 200GB hard drive
Blu-Ray optical drive (reads high resolution DVDs)
Vista Home Premium

Sony @ Cheap Laptops

Sony releases 16Gb Memory Stick Duo

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:30:33 +0000

Yesterday, Sony announced the expansion of its high-definition recording options with the introduction of 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ media. This large-capacity flash storage device is ideal for Sony’s new Handycam® camcorders based on AVCHD™ technology as well as the latest high-resolution Sony cameras (Cyber-shotTM & α). Users can store up to 110 minutes of high-definition video recorded in 1920 mode, almost 6 hours of HD video when shooting in 1440 LP mode, and more than 4000 still pictures in 10 Megapixel resolution.

Sony 16Gb Memorystick

The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo media, is the optimal recording media for HD content because of its ability to quickly and easily transfer large amounts of video content between devices. The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo media can be removed from the camcorder and inserted directly into the Memory Stick slot of a PC or laptop or in a compatible adaptor. In Europe, for the initial launch promotion, it will be bundled with a handy USB adaptor - making it even easier to transfer files from your devices onto your PC for editing and sharing content.

The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ media will be available in March 2008. It could prove a useful asset for laptops, adding portable storage, media transfer and low latency diskspace.

Tip: If you're thinking of getting a 16Gb Memorystick then look out for the following:

Does your device support such large memory?

Is your device compatible with "Memory Stick PRO Duo" - it's evolved a few times?

Do you need Memory Stick or would waiting a few months for a cheaper alternative do better?

New Sony VAIO TZ-Series moves (with) people

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:00:12 +0100

Created for people who always choose the best, the VAIO TZ-Series offers a potent fusion of portability and performance with exceptional design.

“This is where high technology meets the luxury market,” says Jun Koyama, Marketing Director for Sony VAIO of Europe (VOE). “We’ve used cutting-edge materials technology, the latest platform and the highest design values not just to meet but to exceed the expectations of our most demanding customers.”

Vaio TZ : Coming soon

Customer feedback from existing TX-Series owners1 is clear: 60% use their ultra-portables on the move. 74% say that a balance between size and weight is ‘very important’. Issues such as size, weight and durability are vital. This is why both the screen housing and the base of the chassis are constructed using carbon fibre re-enforcement technology more familiar in the world of Formula One racing. This ensures complete durability while keeping the weight down to a remarkable 1.19kg for absolute portability. To complete the picture, even the AC adaptor is miniaturised, occupying a volume of just 120cc and adding negligibly to the carrying weight.

Unsurprisingly, almost 70% of customers rate design as important, and it plays a central part in defining the VAIO TZ-Series’ appeal. The visually arresting ‘Full Flat’ design is a masterpiece of stylish minimalism which ensures that the VAIO TZ always gets noticed. Every detail is carefully considered, right down to the aesthetic of the keyboard, inspired by the submerged stones of a Japanese water garden.

An astonishingly small Motion Eye webcam is artfully concealed in the screen surround. When you consider that the lid is a mere 4mm thick – itself a remarkable feat of engineering – the miniaturisation of the camera is all the more impressive.

Unlike standard Wide XGA panels, the TZ-Series’ 11.1-inch WXGA (1366 x 768) screen has a true 16:9 aspect ratio which makes it ideal for watching films. The display offers the boosted contrast and vibrant colours that are the hallmarks of Sony X-black LCD technology, plus power-saving LED illumination that helps extend battery life. The next-generation panel also boasts exceptional colour accuracy of 72%. This means photos, personal video and films literally appear more lifelike and convincing compared to conventional displays. Such attention to screen quality is driven by the knowledge that people rightly regard it as important - 72% of customers said so.

Sexy laptops?

Despite its highly compact, unusually slim case, the TZ-Series has a wealth of features. It’s powered by the very latest Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Ultra-Low Voltage CPU backed by 2GB DDR2 SDRAM and hard disk options go all the way up to 100GB – the largest available size for the tiny 1.8-inch drives required by the super-compact form factor. This precision use of space ensures that there’s even room for an integrated DVD±R/RW RAM optical drive featuring Double Layer (DL) technology for massive capacity.

After web browsing and email, customers reported that their second most popular activity is watching DVDs. With this in mind VAIO engineers added two special features to the TZ-Series. You can enjoy films and music easily any time thanks to Instant On, which lets you play DVDs and audio CDs without booting into Windows. A set of dedicated AV buttons provides the necessary play control.

Security is vital for peace of mind, so the TZ-Series employs an ironclad combination of fingerprint recognition and Trusted™ Platform Module (TPM) hardware encryption to keep your personal data absolutely safe. Should you accidentally drop the machine, Sony G-Sensor Hard Disk Shock Protection automatically parks the drive heads to prevent damage to the disk.

1 Figures quoted are from a sample of 5,000 VAIO TX-Series owners. The TX-Series ultra-portable is sufficiently similar to the TZ-Series to provide a good source of relevant customer opinion.

TZ-Series rundown:

CPU: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo U7600 or U7500
RAM: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
HDD: 100GB or 80GB
Graphics: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Optical: DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
Screen: 11.1-inch X-black LCD featuring 72% colour accuracy and LED illumination
Security: Fingerprint recognition; TPM
Special controls: Instant On; AV buttons
Wireless: Intel® wireless LAN 802.11 a b g, Bluetooth
Weight: 1.19kg
Software: Adobe® Photoshop® Elements, Adobe® Premiere® Elements, Click to DVD®, WinDVD 8.0 for VAIO
Case construction: Carbon fibre lid and base
Operating system: Windows Vista™ Business