Featherlight and feature packed
Written: Jun 29 '01
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Pros: Size, weight, features, interface connections
Cons: Battery life, bundled software
The Bottom Line: Very light, capable, and expandable. Plays well with other Sony consumer products (camcorders, digital cameras, MP3 players, Palm-compatible Clie's, etc).
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| bytre's Full Review: Sony VAIO Z505LS PC Notebook |
My model is actually the PCG-Z505LSK, which is almost identical to the LS, but has Windows 2000 instead of Windows Millennium. My unit has the 20gb hard disk and 256mb of RAM.
I have been a desktop computer user for years and years, and have avoided getting a portable because I didn't want to step down in performance and capability. I now use this laptop at work and bring it home every day - I still do have desktops I use for games or some other tasks, but most of my writing, email, web usage, etc. is all done on this laptop. I have had it for about 5 months now and am very used to its features and hangups.
Because I move it around a lot, the weight is very important to me. This is one of the lightest laptops I could find which still has a good sized keyboard and display.
I love the portability it gives me. With the optional Sony Vaio wireless ethernet 802.11b network card, I can surf the web or connect to my home or work network whether I'm at a desk, in a meeting room, in my living room, or out in the back yard. Amazing portability.
To conserve space and weight, Sony has removed some peripherals which may be rarely used, like the floppy drive (which I have never used) and optional CD/DVD ROM drive (which I have used a couple times). Because these get used so rarely, it is a real benefit to not have to carry them around in the laptop.
The laptop is still replete with connectors and features, however. It has a built-in 10/100 Ethernet connector (much faster than the 11 megabit wireless card), a 56k modem, an infrared port (which I use for syncing to my Palm), 20 gigabyte hard drive, stereo sound speakers and microphone, two USB connectors (one normal, one mini), external microphone and speaker jacks, FireWire/iLink/IEEE 1394 port, PCMCIA/PC Card slot, touchpad mouse, and a couple other Sony-only features.
One of these is the expansion connector, which allows you to connect a port replicator. The replicator has a VGA port, a parallel printer port, a serial port, another USB port, and another iLink/Firewire/IEEE 1394 port. The port replicator weighs only a few ounces, so its easily portable. One disadvantage - the machine has to be turned off before the replicator can be plugged in.
Another proprietary Sony feature is the "jog dial". This little dial on the right side of the case is like a little wheel which can be spun up or down, or pressed in. It is like an enhancement to the mouse. I use it frequently for very quickly scrolling up and down through web pages. It also can be used to bring up a menu of commands for window management (minimize, maximize, etc) or launch all sorts of programs, and is fully customizable. At first I didn't like it, but I find that it speeds up my computing considerably when I don't have a mouse attached.
The last proprietary Sony feature is a MemoryStick slot. Memory sticks come in 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128mb increments. When you plug one in, it shows up as an S: drive. These little sticks (about half the size of a piece of gum) are very convenient if you use other Sony equipment, like digital cameras, camcorders, Palm-compatible organizers, MP3 players, etc. You can transfer pictures, music, or data MUCH faster than you can through a USB cable, and as I have Sony digital camcorder (with digital camera capabilities), I use it all the time for transferring pictures.
The display is a giant 11" LCD screen with easily adjustable brightness via the keyboard and jog dial. It uses the ATI Rage Mobility M1 AGP chipset with 8mb of RAM, making it competent for most games, but no match for a TNT2 card in a desktop. The maximum resolution is 1024x768 with 32 bit colour. The display is quite easy to view and appears to be of good quality with no missing pixels. I do have a couple gripes with it though - the colour controls on it (via ATI software) are these fuzzy "pull the colour response curve" controls which are very impractical to use to properly calibrate your colour, and in the defaults, they are not even close to standard NTSC. This isn't a problem for most applications, but if you want to watch a DVD or video from a camcorder, the colour quality is disappointing.
One big advantage of the IEEE 1394 (also known as FireWire or Sony's term, iLINK) connector is that it is fast - very fast. 4 times the speed of a 100 megabit ethernet connector and totally outclasses USB devices. I have a Sony camcorder with a 1394 interface, which hooks up to the laptop seamlessly. Plug in the camcorder, and I can watch video and transfer it to/from the camcorder quickly and easily. I haven't actually done any video editing yet, but I plan to (yeah, right). I also have a 1394 hard drive which I use occasionally, but don't use nearly as often as I expected I would - the 20gb in the laptop tends to be enough.
I mentioned the battery life as a con. With the default (very light) battery, you only get about an hour to an hour and a half of life. This is rarely enough for me, so I sprung for the high capacity battery. This battery is about a pound, but I get 3.5 hours out of it - this is long enough for me that I leave my power adapter at work all week and run on battery power at home.
The power management capabilities of the laptop, in concert with Windows 2000, are pretty good. I have it set to power down the hard drive and turn off the screen if I'm not using the machine, so I don't waste the battery while I'm not using the machine. It also supports standby (it can run for about a day in standby) and can resume from standby in about 5 seconds. It automatically goes into standby if you close the cover, which is quite convenient, and I do this often when moving from meeting to meeting or from room to room chasing my toddler.
It also supports Windows 2000 hibernation, which writes out your entire computing session to the hard disk and turns off. When you turn the machine back on, it re-loads things and you're back where you were - all your applications are running, all your data is loaded, you're ready to go instantly. Restoring from hibernation takes about 20 seconds, and it takes about 15 seconds to enter hibernation mode (I have 256 megs of RAM - it would take less time with 128mb). I usually use the hibernation while I am travelling to or from work. Hibernation can also be enabled automatically if your machine is idle for a while.
Oh, the greatest thing about the hibernation is that it will automatically go into hibernation if your battery dies. Although I have been frustrated before when I'm trying to do "one more thing" and the battery hits 2%, there have been many many other times when I am thankful for it because it saves all my work and a worn-down battery has never lost any of my data.
I griped earlier about the colour adjustments, which are in ATI's software. I did get the DVD attachment for the machine, hoping to turn it into a portable DVD player for my son on long trips. I have only used the DVD a few times, but each time has been a frustrating experience. The Sony branded "mediabar" media player is a total joke, and I haven't found other DVD software which is compatible with the LCD display. Mediabar loves to refuse to play a disk with an informative "Your audio or video options are incorrect" failure message, with absolutely no detail useful for troubleshooting the problem. The mediabar help is abysmal, failing to document some features of the program and providing useless troubleshooting help. I am very disappointed with Mediabar.
The other software is a mixed bag. It does include top quality Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photodeluxe, Microsoft Office 2000, plus some others like SoundForge XP, DV Gate Motion, DV Gate Still, PhotoPrinter 2000 Pro, ImageStation, PictureGear, OpenMG Jukebox, MovieShaker, and some others. Some of the software is feature limited, but all of it is functional. My machine had Mcafee virusscan on it which I promptly removed and installed Norton, but Norton will start shipping on these eventually.
Some of the software is just bad - "VisualFlow" for example, tries to make your computer into some Hollywood movie Cyberspace interface, where drives and folders float around and twist before your eyes. This annoying monstrosity pops up automatically when you insert a memorystick, and is pretty useless for navigating.
Still, the installed software lets you do a lot of tasks, including picture editing and printing and video editing, which was real nice to find.
I have attempted to contact technical support on a couple of issues. Before I got the Sony wireless card, I had a 3com card (generally accepted as the best on the market). The card worked fine for networking, but would conflict with the USB bus - if I plugged in a USB mouse, the network would go offline. Sony said "Its a 3com problem", 3com said "its a Sony problem" (I suspect Sony's USB implementation).
The second time was about the DVD problem. I mailed support on their web site explaining my mediabar problem, they came back and said "this is too technical, you have to call phone support".
Overall, I like the machine very much. The quality of some of the bundled software is bad, and battery life short, but the machine is so capable it has enabled me to truly work seperate from my desktop machine, without lugging too many pounds around.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2500
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 11
RAM: 256
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
bytre
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Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 4 members
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