The Sony VAIO FZ is a 15.4 screen notebook that includes the new Intel Santa Rosa platform. The VAIO FZ is an update to the popular VAIO FE notebook that will be phased out in the face of the FZ. The VAIO FZ can be purchased at a base price of close to $1,250 with the VAIO FZ140 offering, or it can be decked out with Blu-Ray, a fast 2.20GHz processor and NVidia 8400M GT graphics card for over $2,000.
System as Reviewed
I purchased the Sony VAIO FZ140 configuration. Its the base configuration that can be found for around $1,300. Theres no dedicated graphics card and it comes with the slowest 1.80GHz Intel T7100 Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa processor thats available, but slow is a relative term as in my opinion the T7100 processor is just great, especially for my needs.
Here are the specs of the VAIO FZ140E/B:
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7100
- Memory: 2GB of DDR2 667MHz (expandable to 4GB)
- OS: Windows Vista Premium
- Hard Drive: 200GB ToshibaMK2035GSS (4200RPM)
- Optical Drive: DVD and CD Burner
- Wireless: 802.11 a/b/g/n
- Ports: 3 USB 2.0, FireWire, ExpressCard slot, S-Video out, VGA monitor out, SD card slot, MemoryStick card slot, Modem, Ethernet, headphone jack, microphone jack
- Dimensions: 14.0 inches x 10.2 inches x 1.4 inches (Width x Depth x Height)
- Weight: 5.62 lbs
- Warranty: 1-year
I should mention that with the VAIO FZ140 you dont get an HDMI port, while with any FZ notebook that has the Nvidia 8400M card you do get an HDMI out port. This is especially handy if you configure a Blu-Ray drive with your FZ and want to output high-quality digital video to a larger screen. I already have a Sony Playstation III with Blu-Ray and so didnt need this option. I also dont do any hard core gaming on my notebook, so the dedicated graphics card was not a concern.
Places to buy
The VAIO FZ can be purchased in stores such as Circuit City, where I purchased mine, online via SonyStyle.com, or at just about any online electronics retailer. Do your homework to find the best price. SonyStyle.com offers the VAIO FZ190 configurable notebook (CTO) in which you can select your processor, amount of RAM, hard drive, optical drive and even the keyboard color option of black or white.
Weigh-In
Weighing the Sony VAIO FZ with battery in
One thing I like to always do with any new gadget I get is take it to the scales and see if the weight matches what the manufacturer quotes. Light weight is important with a laptop, the easier it is to carry around the better. According to Sony the weight of the VAIO FZ140 is 5.75 lbs. Usually manufacturers under quote weight, but when I put the FZ140 on the scales I found it to be only 5.62lbs. If you add the power brick and cord in, otherwise known as the travel weight, the total comes to 6.41 lbs. This isnt bad for a 15.4 screen notebook by any means, its lighter than average. Below is a comparison table of 15.4 screen notebooks similar to the VAIO FZ and what their weights are with a standard sized battery:
| Notebook | Weight |
| Sony VAIO FZ (15.4 screen) | 5.62lbs |
| Dell Inspiron 1520 (15.4 screen) | 6.4lbs |
| Sony VAIO FE (15.4 screen) | 6.17lbs |
| HP Pavilion dv6500t (15.4 screen) | 6.14lbs |
Weighing the Sony VAIO FZ with power cord and battery
Size-Up
Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks. The approximate volume (or space the laptop occupies) is calculated by taking the Width x Height x Depth. When the notebook slopes the average height is taken (max height + min height / 2) as the multiplier. Just for fun I also calculate the density, to show how much weight is packed into each cubic inch.
| Notebook | Dimensions | Approximate Volume | Density |
| Sony VAIO FZ (15.4 screen) | 14″(W) x 0.98-1.4″(H) x 10.02″(D) | 166.93 in | .0337 lbs / in |
| Dell Inspiron 1520 (15.4 screen) | 14.12 (W) x 1.47 - 1.65 (H) x 10.59 (D) | 233.26 in | .02743 lbs / in |
| Sony VAIO FE (15.4 screen) | 14.41 (W) x 1.02 -1.39 (H) x 10.81 (D) | 187.71 in | .0329 lbs / in |
| HP Pavilion dv6500t (15.4 screen) | 14.05″ (W) x 1 - 1.69″ (max H) x 10.12″ (D) | 191.24 in | .0321 lbs / in |
As you can see, the VAIO FZ is fairly light and compact for the class of notebooks it competes with. The higher the density the more the notebook packs into a small space. Higher density isnt always a good thing as sometimes it can mean the manufacturer has crammed too much stuff into a small space, thereby resulting in overheating issues.
Looks
The VAIO FZ is a very clean looking and pretty notebook. Its not flashy, but rather has a nice understated tone to it. This is typical of most Sony VAIO laptops. I especially like the media button layout, the buttons look nice and are also functional.
The coloring of the VAIO FZ is mostly a matte silver. The keyboard area on mine is black, but you can actually configure the FZ190 with a white keyboard if you like.
At worst you could call the VAIO FZ a bit plain Jane, but if you’re a minimalist you’ll appreciate the design.
Construction
The VAIO FZ seems to be mostly made of a rigid plastic material for the case, with some magnesium in the lid for extra protection. If you push the lid from behind you wont get ripples in the screen, which means that the protection there is adequate. The case overall is sturdy, though by no means rugged.
Ports
The port selection of the VAIO FZ is pretty standard for a 15.4 mainstream multimedia notebook. Again Ill compare it to what other notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition
| Ports | Sony VAIO FZ | HP Pavilion dv6500t | Sony VAIO FE | Dell Inspiron 1520 |
| USB 2.0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| FireWire | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Media Card Reader | Yes (MS and SD) | 4-in-1 | Yes (5-in1) | Yes (8-in-1) |
| Ethernet | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Modem | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Headphone out | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microphone in | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monitor out | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI | Yes (optional) | No | No | No |
| DVI-D | No | No | No | No |
| S-Video | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ExpressCard Slot | Yes (34mm) | Yes (34mm / 54mm) | Yes (34mm) | Yes (54mm) |
| PCMCIA Slot | No | No | Yes | No |
| Expansion Dock Port | No | Yes (Expansion Port 3) | No | No |
Following are some pictures giving a tour around the notebook so you can see where the ports are located.
Left side: S-Video port, Monitor out port, USB D-Sub port, FireWire, ExpressCard 34 slot
Front: Memory Stick and SD Card reader slot
Right Side: Headphone port, Microphone port, 2 USB ports, Optical drive, power jack
Back side: Modem and Ethernet Port
The ports are fairly well arranged, though the USB ports are a bit close. I like the front placement of the media card reader slots, but wonder why Sony cant just put an 8-in-1 media card reader in instead of using two different slots for the MemoryStick and then SD card.
Keyboard
I’m a keyboard snob, and the VAIO FZ keyboard is a disappointment to me. Though the keys are laid out quite well and a nice size, the feel of the keys is pretty awful. The travel is shallow, the keys feel like they might pop off if you get a fingernail caught under them, and it overall just feels cheap to type on. If you’re not a keyboard snob you wont care, but if you place a high-value on how a keyboard feels youll probably feel the same as I do.
Touchpad
The touchpad feels nice and works well, its got a widescreen aspect ratio to match the screen which is good. Id like the touchpad to be a little bigger, its not as big as a MacBook touchpad. Theres also no way to turn the touchpad off with the push of a button.
The mouse buttons are awful, they’re made of cheap plastic, have no travel, and give an awful clickety-clunk when you push them.
Buttons
You get a nice array of buttons on the VAIO FZ. Theres an AV button that takes you to an instant on mode where you can listen to music, watch videos or view images. This is really a fast loading stripped down Linux OS mode. See the Sony online guide for more about this mode. You can control media using the circular arranged media buttons in the Instant On mode, or you can use these same buttons within Windows Media player when booted to the Vista OS.
Theres also an S button that you can configure to quick launch an application of your choosing. By default it opens Internet Explorer when pushed.
Screen
Sony is well known for having beautiful XBrite screens, with the FZ140 you get the XBrite-Eco display. Sony claims the XBrite-Eco offers better power efficiency than the regular XBrite screen, but really all it means is that its a slightly dimmer backlight. This isnt bad though, for my needs the XBrite-Eco display is plenty bright enough, and it looks quite lovely. The glossy screen really makes the colors pop out. The glossy screen wont work well in a brightly lit environment because youll get a lot of reflection off of the screen, so if youre using this under a strong office lighting setting you wont be happy. If youre watching a DVD on this screen in a darkened room it will be wonderful though.
Bold colors on the glossy VAIO FZ screen, but beware of reflection from strong lights
In some literature Sony boasts about the Blu-Ray abilities and its 1080p quality video, but be aware that the WXGA resolution screen wont give high-def video justice, WXGA is the lowest resolution offered on notebooks of this size. Its a little disappointing there’s no option for a higher resolution screen.
Sound
The speakers are located at the top of the keyboard area on the FZ. They’re typical underpowered laptop speakers. The FZ has an Intel High Definition Audio sound card, but with only a regular headphone jack the best youll get is 2.1 audio output. As long as you’re not an audiophile a good set of headphones or external speakers will suffice just fine for better listening experiences with music or movies.
Performance
The power of the VAIO FZ140 is the lowest end in the series, but it doesn’t feel underpowered. Once Id removed a slew of free software Sony provided, performance was quite good. The 2GB of provided RAM is adequate for running Windows Vista, for basic users you wont need more. The T7100 processor is a good performer, it doesn’t have the 4MB of cache that the higher-end Intel Santa Rosa processors use, but again for basic use such as Office tasks, email and web browsing I cant possibly think why you’d need more. If you’re gaming, yes, definitely you’d want to get one of the faster Intel processors offered with the FZ140.
The graphics card that comes with the FZ140 is the integrated Intel X3100. This will work for some gaming, such as Sims 2 and even Half Life 2, but not for more demanding games such as Oblivion. If you want to do some gaming or you want to use your FZ to output high-def video then definitely go for the Nvidia 8400M graphics. Remember, you only get the HDMI port with an FZ series laptop configured with dedicated graphics.
The FZ140 comes with a 200GB hard drive. This is great for storing a ton of content such as music and videos. What its not great for is performance, its a very slow 4200RPM spinning drive, so you can really feel the slowness when booting into Vista which is a painful experience. Go for a smaller faster hard drive if you want performance, but if you’re a storage fiend then just accept the slower performance and go for a large sized hard drive.
Bottom line, the FZ140 performs well for most normal tasks, and if you want better performance just step up the specs.
I ran PCMark05 on the VAIO FZ140 to get an overall system performance score, you can see that the FZ140 performs quite well with its 3,274 score. This result was gained using out of the box configuration settings and before any of the bloatware was removed from the system.
Camera
The VAIO FZ offers a built-in 0.30 MP web camera, a feature thats almost a standard offering in laptops of this size now. The resolution of 0.30MP isnt very good, but it makes sense to have for video chat, any higher and it would require too much bandwidth to transfer the video. It could work for a quick YouTube video upload as well.
Bloatware
Holy cow! Sony is the new king of installing completely useless and unwanted software on notebooks. The list is just too long for the number of apps you’ll want to take off and that continually are prompting you to register, I found over 20GB of crap on the hard drive. I really hate the fact all image files are by default associated to a Corel image application, and the first time you go to open an image you’re prompted to purchase this application.
The number of AOL applications and links installed is just sick, and thanks a lot Sony for making AOL my default homepage out of the box. There’s even this really dumb widget on the right side for Travelocity with that stupid gnome giving random quotes. All this crap slows down the VAIO FZ and is a major annoyance to the consumer. Unfortunately a new buyer will have to spend 30 mins to an hour going into the Control Panel > Programs area and uninstalling all the useless software youll get. I don’t recommend doing anything like a clean OS install, its a major pain to get all the right drivers from Sony and they wont support you if you do this.
Noise
Ive heard a lot of complaints from people owning the VAIO FZ saying it makes a high-pitched noise. I must be either too old to hear such high-pitch noises anymore or my notebook is one of the lucky ones unaffected by this. The VAIO FZ140 is really quiet in my usage, the fan hasn’t come on much except when I was running some benchmarks, and the hard drive is quiet without any annoying clicks.
I think having the Nvidia 8400M card could really make a huge difference in terms of amount of noise the laptop generates. With the 8400M the laptop will run hotter, and thereby more noisy as the fan will have to work extra. That all amounts to less battery life too.
Heat
The heat of a notebook can correlate a lot with the noise. This is because the hotter it is the more the fan has to run. Im happy to report for the VAIO FZ140 the machine remains cool pretty much all over. With the integrated graphics and 1.80GHz processor there just wasnt much heat build-up. Again, this could be very different if you have the dedicated Nvidia 8400m graphics card and a faster processor.
Battery
I set the VAIO FZ to the lowest screen brightness, put it in power saving mode using Vista and let it mostly just idle with wireless on and the battery ran down to 5% left at 3 hours and 10 minutes. This is pretty good, but if you are actually using the laptop expect something more like 2.25 hours at the most. If you have a faster processor and dedicated graphics expect 2 hours or less on battery.
Conclusion
The VAIO FZ is a pretty solid notebook for the price. Lets face it, the Sony brand is cooler than Dell or HP, so you still pay a little bit for that. The look of the VAIO FZ is nice, its very configurable so you can get a model that suits your needs and its one of the thinnest and lightest 15.4 screen notebooks out there among the major brands. The keyboard and amount of bloatware are my biggest complaints. The excellent screen, quality build and light weight are my favorite features.
Cheers
- Excellent screen, very good for movie watching
- Light weight for a 15.4 notebook, one of the thinnest in its class
- Nice Instant On feature with a touch of the button
- Plenty of storage at 200GB
- Very configurable to fit your needs via SonyStyle.com
- Fast Intel Santa Rosa processor
- Minimalist and pleasing design
Jeers
- Awful feeling keyboard and mouse buttons
- Hard drive is slow at only 4200RPM
- Record amount of bloatware, nearly 20GB
- Only 3 USB ports, most other laptops of this size have 4
- Speakers are quite poor, too quiet
July 1st, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I’m planning to buy FZ190N5 next week, I just want to know how much exactly user feels difference in 160GB-5400rpm & 200Gb 4200rpm drives ??
ALso is there any problem in upgrading pre-installed vista premium edition to vista ultimate edition ?
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:13 pm
You’ll see about a 3 - 5 second faster boot up time with the 5400RPM drive and when the hard drive has to be accessed it will overall be faster. I’d recommend going with the 160GB drive personally.
Upgrading to Vista Ultimate is easy enough as long as you have a disc, I recommend NOT doing a fresh install though and just upgrade, if you do a fresh install you’ll have to go get all the drivers from Sony and that can be a pain.
Good luck!
July 4th, 2007 at 4:28 am
I just got the VAIO FZ190 and I agree with everything that the reviewer said. I have a couple of questions about the computer.
The first concerns the built-in video camera. I found the capture utility that enables the camera. However, I can’t figure out how to use the camera as a webcam. Also, I’ve tried to use the camera to import pictures into a photo utility, but the utility says there is no camera attached.
Another question is with the Instant Mode. The manual says to activate the Instant Mode by pressing the AV Mode button when the computer is turned off. However, when I press the AV Mode button, it boots into Windows.
Any thoughts on these questions? Thanks for the help.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Right on about the bloatware. Really HATE the fact that I can’t change the AOL homepage on Internet Explorer. Tried last night and thought I was going crazy.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:39 am
I’m planing to buy a FZ11S and I’d like to know how to change my homepage, like said in the review it must be a pain in the ass.
Congratz and thanks for the GREAT review.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Honestly, this laptop has so much bloatware its almost criminal. Nobody buy this laptop until Sony gets its act together and stop putting so much damn bloatware in.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:54 am
great laptop… i will go for this when my dell 1420 can’t make it… Nice review… good job…
July 16th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Can anyone give me an idea how big a hassle it is to upgrade the HDD on this thing?
July 17th, 2007 at 2:35 am
My new VGN-FZ160E with a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate don’t run Instant On mode, can anybody help me?
July 19th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
i just bought one 2 days ago and its not here yet but is it true about not being able to change your homepage? because if it is thats crazy. what about if you use firefox? can you you set that correctly?
July 20th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Yes, with Firefox you can change your hompage. I’m surprised IE7 won’t allow you to change the AOL garbage. It’s easy enough to do in IE6.
I used to buy Sony laptops, but 20GB of bloatware is enough to have me look somewhere else. Unless you want to go throught he pain of downgrading to XP Pro and Sony’s lack of co-operation in terms of drivers.
And you won’t get fresh backup CDs from Sony. Only backup CDs that also contain the original bloatware, for an extra $15.
July 21st, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Thanx for such a gr8 review could u please suggest whether I should go for Sony FZ series laptop or Apple Macbook ? I am unable to decide.
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Very good review.
I’m going to have to second what Ashu said before me, I’m trying to choose between the FZ and a 15.4″ Apple MacBook Pro. The Apple would be the first Mac I’ve ever used, so I’d love some advice from people who have experience with either Macs or Vaios.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Answer:
NVIDIA card doesn’t support intant mode. It sucks! Talked to Sony but the naswer is the graphics card don’t support. SO, the AV mode button takes you into windows
Question:
Another question is with the Instant Mode. The manual says to activate the Instant Mode by pressing the AV Mode button when the computer is turned off. However, when I press the AV Mode button, it boots into Windows.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Beware: I went for the included Sony ad to double my pleasure by upgrading the Home Premium to Ultimate. I did so, then discovered that VAIO update won’t work. Sony says that is because they don’t support Ultimate on my VGN FZ140E…and that it is not their fault…even though they encourage you to do so (by enclosing the ad and a Windows Anytime update CD inside the box.) Incredible.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 am
tnx 4 review.. i was so close to buy a fz190 vaio but now i don think so anymore..maybe i goto dell d830..lower in vga and looking but better in performance n battery life n ports..what s ur idea?
September 13th, 2007 at 8:09 am
hi i just wanna buy a notebook and this notebook was offered to me in a price of 1049
October 13th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I upgraded from Vista Premium to Ultimate version and the stop working.Now I got the message ‘Noaudiooutput device installed’
November 20th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
My new VGN-FZ160E have windows Vista premium don’t install windows xp on the notebook, can anybody help me?
December 4th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
can someone tell me please how can I make my microphone works? I have a VAIO FZ190 and when I’m using messanger I can hear the person that I’m talking with but he cannot hear me. The same if I plug in the headphones. It doesn’t have any effect. so I think I have to install some drivers for my microphone and I don’t know where can I find it. can someone help me, please? thank you
January 28th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Just bought FZ260E at CompUSA closing sale. Awesome little laptop. Speakers are weak. Bloatware is massive. BluRay drive is loud at startup of movies and you do pay the price 4 this option in speed of dvd/cd writing. But other than those issues, AWESOME! Very happy & have hdmi to acer p241w lcd… WOW!!! FZ great buy overall… just need sony get on the ball with 64bit driver support!
April 30th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Can somebody let me know how to perminetly change AOL from being my default homepage. When I change it, and re-start, it comes back. IE7
Thanks
July 10th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Use Firefox
July 20th, 2008 at 5:31 am
I bought a FZ180E/B and it’s great. I clean installed Ultimate 64-bit, and found that my Nvidia had no graphics drivers….so to work around that little problem I hacked the inf file, and used this program called ready driver to disable driver checks on every boot so I don’t have to do so. Now all works well except the memory card reader and what I assume is the sony firmware extension parser. Oh, and I got this laptop refurbished (looks new except a few dead pixels that you can only notice on a pure black screen) for $1,199. Keep in mind though everyone that this particular laptop has the 8400GT and a blu-ray writer not just a reader. Clearanceclub dot com is where I got it from b.t.w. incase anyone was wondering. Oh, and to hack out a graphics driver just get the one available from Nvidia and extract the files out of the installer using 7zip or winrar then locate your graphics card in device manager and copy the hardware id. Look in the inf file from the nvidia package and change those hardware id’s to yours. You are going to have to google ready driver plus to disable driver checks or do so yourself upon every boot of windows by hitting f8 upon boot.
July 20th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Oops forgot to mention that you are going to have to get the driver for the 8600/8700GT for mobiles from Nvidia. They don’t list drivers for the 8400gt as sony and other oem’s that use the 8400gt have stupid agreements with Nvidia preventing them from doing so.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Wow, i got my fz 4000 back in april ish.. and its working amazingly. I have the graphics card and instant mode works perfectly (though i hardly use it) and i CAN change my homepage…
as for the microphone, vivi, try going to the control panel, then Sound, then look around for the “sound” tab, and hit the “microphone” button thing. then adjust level. Hope that works.
I just thought of one possible explaination for the instant mode conflict… Does your laptop have Bluray? I think thats the problem, i remember reading the two causes conflict in some review.. but yeah I just have the regular dvd drive so its all good for me
August 24th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
My FZ 180E just died — one month and 2 days out of warranty…
Nvidia has been having trouble w/ the 8400m gt graphics cards over heating and mine did just that.
Sony says it has no information about this and will not extend the warranty (unlike dell or mac which are supposedly replacing bad 8400m’s ).
Sony will let me send it in and pay $700-ish for replacing the Nvidia — which seems a bit high if this is a “known issue” with these chips.
just something to consider…
November 6th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Yes! Stay away from these until it’s resolved with Sony. My video card shut down too and now my screen is filled with stripes and I can’t install the nVidia drivers or else it will crash completely. Sign this petition if you have the same problem, please. Trying to make Sony take responsibility for this mistake!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/vaioproblem/
December 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Same exact problem as u, Oskar! A little over a year after I bought my VAIO, my computer started freezing and shutting down–then the white stripes and pixelation appeared all over my screen. I had to disable my NVIDIA driver in safe mode and start using Microsoft’s Standard VGA Graphics Adapter, just so I could use my computer again. Trying to reinstall any NVIDIA driver crashes my computer and won’t allow it to restart.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I own a FZ 190 and I bought the extended version of the battery, but it is a bit too heavy so I am planning to buy the standard battery. However, I am very confused on which model of battery fits my laptop. I asked the sony support from the chat, he told me to buy model: VGP-BPS2B, but it does not look like it. I searched through myself and I found the model: VGP-BPL8 to be more like it. Can you tell me what model battery you are using for your laptop so I will be more clear since you have the same laptop as me. Thank you
April 30th, 2009 at 8:14 am
My VGN-FZ180E is also dead because of the nVIDIA issue. 18 months old and it won’t even boot to safe mode so that I can disable the drivers and work in VGA mode. Green vertical stripes when the machine shows the VAIO logo at bootup, and dots over the Windows logo.
I called Sony and they claimed there is no problem with the chip in Sony computers. I call BS on that line, as ALL G92/94 and G84/86 GPUs made by nVIDIA are defective and will fail just after the 1-year warranty.
Sony, you are a high end manufacture with low-end morals.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:41 am
i have a sony vaio FZ 31ZR that i got for birthday present and it works perfectly. it has an intel core duo 2 T8300 processor 2,4GHz 4GB ram Blu Ray and Nvidia Geforce 8600M GS GPU. It is perfekt for me and you can play many hi def videos/games on it.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Don’t buy this, even used. Don’t buy a Vaio. I’ve had the FZ72B (Japan-only model) for a couple years and would like to upgrade to Vista Ultimate, but doing this bricks the machine. So Windows 7 is pretty much out of the question. Sony does not want anyone to upgrade anything on this machine, and I feel like I’ve rented it rather than bought it. This is my third and last Vaio. Done with Sony.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Oh, and the battery fails completely after 2 years of minimal use and costs $300 to replace. Some whole computers cost about $400. Please.
August 4th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I’ve owned this for over 3 years now. Have Nvidia GPU option. It died a month before the 3 year extended warranty expired for this issue, so I got a new mb. Tech came to my location to replace. I’ve watched Toshibas and HPs and Dells die around me that were bought after this, so there’s something to be said for this death being recognized and repaired for free. Having said that, do not buy this used unless it’s an Intel GPU. It probably won’t last much longer with an Nvidia option. I was able to upgrade to Win7 using an excellent guide that you can google. Updated Nvidia drivers available via 3rd party with another search. Love the screen. Performance is still relevant. Left mouse button is dying. Fan heatsink accumulates dust, which is common, but it’s a problem. Can be noisy once hot. And it does get hot. Battery is at around half-life. There was a rw bluray option, so look for that.