[The Godfather]

http://reviews.designtechnica.com/firstlook24.html

Main features
both Firewire, DVD+CDRW
regular Airport vs. Airport Extreme
no bluetooth vs. bluetooth included
Centrino chipset 900MHz vs. G4 866MHz
3.1 pounds vs. 4.6 pounds
Built-in camera vs. no camera
$2000 vs. $1600
XP vs. OSX

Who's got the power and the sex now??? Hard to tell.

[Eug Wanker]

Nice computer but it only has a 10.6" screen and it costs a lot more.

Actually the resolution is actually higher than the 12" PowerBook, but personally I find the 12" 1024x768 screen already too small. A 10.6" 1280x768 screen would be painful.

[DaedalusDX]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Nice computer but it only has a 10.6" screen and it costs a lot more.

Actually the resolution is actually higher than the 12" PowerBook, but personally I find the 12" 1024x768 screen already too small. A 10.6" 1280x768 screen would be painful.

EEP!

[nvaughan3]

512MB DDR, 30 Gig HD, 1.44" thick, 10.6x7.4 (almost a sheet of notebook paper) 400mhz bus, USB2 + memory stick, and the following software:

AOL, Adobe Premiere LE, Microsoft Age of Empires II, Sony SonicStage, Adobe Photoshop Elements, VAIO Support Agent, ScreenBlast ACID, Sony PictureGear Studio, Sony Network Smart Capture , Microsoft Works 7.0, Microsoft Money 2003, InterVideo WinDVD 4, RealOne Player, VAIO Media, Microsoft Encarta Online, Sony DVgate Plus, MSN 8, Sony SonicStage Mastering Studio

[thunderous_funker]

The Sony has a 10.6" screen. For those who think the 12" is questionably small, the Sony might not be a palatable option.

The Sony has an integrated graphics chipset with 64MB of "shared" memory. I'm not sure how that compares to the Mac's 32MB of dedicated memory on the nVidia board. Anyone?

The Mac has a larger HD. The Sony has a much faster system bus.

Interestingly, it's the Mac that is considerably cheaper. At Sony's website, I can't configure the machine for less than $2200. For that much, I could get the 12" with a Superdrive and an iPod.

I am very impressed with the Sony. I'm glad they finally got an optical drive in one of their small, sexy laptops (they were always external before). It is a terrific little machine. That Centrino processor is quite a chip, too. But the powerbook still seems like it has very clear advantages.

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Nice computer but it only has a 10.6" screen and it costs a lot more.

Actually the resolution is actually higher than the 12" PowerBook, but personally I find the 12" 1024x768 screen already too small. A 10.6" 1280x768 screen would be painful.

But less is more! I use a 3-lb, 10" laptop. Now Sony brings this in, with optical drive IN.

[permanent68]

I have a Sony laptop that weighs 2.98 lbs. Sony Vaio SR-17. 600mhz P3. 20 gig hd. 256megs ram. Works good. It doesn't really need to be faster.

- Rob

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by permanent68:
I have a Sony laptop that weighs 2.98 lbs. Sony Vaio SR-17. 600mhz P3. 20 gig hd. 256megs ram. Works good. It doesn't really need to be faster.

- Rob

External optical drive, isn't it?

That is my major complaint about most the "thin & light" PC laptops. Of course, not everyone needs an optical drive, but I consider it non-negotiable.

Sony finally got one in there. Very cool little machine. Very very cool. A bit too small for me, though. And too pricey.

[permanent68]

Yep. External CD. But seriously... how often do you use your CD rom? Rarely. Maybe when installing a program.... or when encoding a CD....but often? Nope. I love it without the CD drive. In fact, that doesn't bother me at all, what bothers me is... wait... I guess the thing doesn't bother me much. It's a DAMN good computer. Really small, pretty fast, and with a wireless card its really handy!

- Rob

[nvaughan3]

It's 2k nearly anywhere but sony's site. You don't buy RAM through apple, don't buy computers through sony. But it third party.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Nice but a 10" screen? What are you going to do with that?

[Superchicken]

ick that thing scares me.

Looks pretty sweet, but lets be honest, why the 10 inch screen when there's so much room around the edges?

Looks like a nice laptop though, it's a bit thicker than the miniBook but yeah... I'd still pick the 12 inch PB, but if someone just gave me one of thse I wouldn't throw it out haha.

[Eug Wanker]

But less is more! I use a 3-lb, 10" laptop. Now Sony brings this in, with optical drive IN

Panasonic already has one. Sony isn't the first.

The Sony has an integrated graphics chipset with 64MB of "shared" memory. I'm not sure how that compares to the Mac's 32MB of dedicated memory on the nVidia board. Anyone?

It's Intel video - ie. SLOW. Plus any fast card would be lost on this machine, because of the shared memory. ie. Strangely enough, the cheaper Mac would likely be faster for games.

how often do you use your CD rom

All the time. Docking stations are a pain in the @ss.

It's a good computer no doubt, but there are many drawbacks to this machine.

[permanent68]

How do you use your CD rom all the time? I almost never use mine... in my iMac... in my old mac... or my Sony viao.

- Rob

PS: It doesn't have a docking station.

[mishap]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
Nice but a 10" screen? What are you going to do with that?

ahh.. the smaller the better.

I would love to have a computer smaller than 12" for my main production machine.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by permanent68:
How do you use your CD rom all the time? I almost never use mine... in my iMac... in my old mac... or my Sony viao.

Mainly for file backups and file transfers to/from others via sneakernet. (It's a DVD-CDRW.) Also, watching DVDs on the plane. CDs with iTunes.

[Sherwin]

This is easy. One says "Apple" on it. One says "Sony" on it. One runs OS X. One generates evil.

My Vaio's been back to the factory more times than I care to remember and had the insurance peeps spending about $6,000 on repairs (no, I don't know why they didn't just replace the thing either - it's had two new screens, a new mobo, new keyboard, new CD-ROM, new floppy - not through abuse).

It's going to need more substantial repairs soon, 'coz as soon as I start with my new hobby it's going to get an arrow through it.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Mainly for file backups and file transfers to/from others via sneakernet.

No network? Don't you use all your firewire pocket drives, and zip disks for that?

You burn CD's just to move a file?

[Cipher13]

It runs XP.

Game over.

[macnnhelpme]

Cute little machine. Sure looks like an iBook though with a camera slapped on it.

I guess my question is this is revolutionary how? Hasn't Sony and most other PC laptop manufacturers had small form factor notebooks?

[Eug]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
No network? Don't you use all your firewire pocket drives, and zip disks for that?

You burn CD's just to move a file?

Not everyone has Firewire or zip disks. Everyone has a CD burner.

I use CD-RW to transfer files to and from colleagues. Network has no FTP site for general use and my colleagues wouldn't know how to use an FTP site anyway. Email no good because the data is too much. (10-150 MB.) CD-R for backups of those files.

Actually work is VERY problematic since most of the system is NT. Even if I brought in my USB and Firewire drives, I couldn't run them on my colleagues computers since there is no real support for USB and Firewire under NT.

I do use zip for personal file transfers and a Firewire pocket drive and iPod for personal backups (for myself). (My second desktop at work is Win XP, but it can read HFS+ drives.)

[daimoni]

.

[X-Ray]

I recently purchased a Sony Vaio notebook and I couldn't be happier (Win XP ain't that bad but it's not OS X). However, I bought mine strictly based on speed and features for the money. If given a choice between a Powerbook and a comparable Windows machine with similar speed and features I'd definitely go for the Powerbook.

[Nebrie]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
The Sony has an integrated graphics chipset with 64MB of "shared" memory. I'm not sure how that compares to the Mac's 32MB of dedicated memory on the nVidia board. Anyone?

If you have 128MB of RAM in your system, you can only use 64MB of it because 64MB is reserved for the graphics card. It's very slow. I have a friend who has a new and fast vaio with "shared ram". Runs games like an ibook on a rage 128 pro with 8mb vram.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Nebrie:
If you have 128MB of RAM in your system, you can only use 64MB of it because 64MB is reserved for the graphics card. It's very slow. I have a friend who has a new and fast vaio with "shared ram". Runs games like an ibook on a rage 128 pro with 8mb vram.

So "shared" means it just uses system RAM for the graphics? I knew they did that back in the old days, but I didn't realize anyone did it any more. I thought maybe it referred to some other scheme.

Yuck city. Not only does that rob you of system memory, it means your graphics memory is throttled to system bus speeds instead of AGP. I didn't think anyone made a mobo like that anymore.

I suspect that would also mean that anytime the GPU accesses memory, it has to steal CPU cycles to do so since its using the system bus instead of a dedicated bus.

[istallion]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
So "shared" means it just uses system RAM for the graphics? I knew they did that back in the old days, but I didn't realize anyone did it any more. I thought maybe it referred to some other scheme.

Yuck city. Not only does that rob you of system memory, it means your graphics memory is throttled to system bus speeds instead of AGP. I didn't think anyone made a mobo like that anymore.

I suspect that would also mean that anytime the GPU accesses memory, it has to steal CPU cycles to do so since its using the system bus instead of a dedicated bus.

Integrated video is still used where price, electricity, or space is a bigger concern than performance.

It does suck system memory bandwidth, but like any component that supports DMA, the CPU isn't interrupted. Even at 1600x1200x32bit and double buffering, the frame buffer would use < 16MB of RAM. I haven't looked at notebook integrated graphics benchmarks, but integrated graphics aren't completly outclassed. The nforce 1 and 2 compare decently with GF2MX & the GF4MX standalone cards. However that sony doesn't have dual channel DDR either.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by istallion:
Integrated video is still used where price, electricity, or space is a bigger concern than performance.

It does suck system memory bandwidth, but like any component that supports DMA, the CPU isn't interrupted. Even at 1600x1200x32bit and double buffering, the frame buffer would use < 16MB of RAM. I haven't looked at notebook integrated graphics benchmarks, but integrated graphics aren't completly outclassed. The nforce 1 and 2 compare decently with GF2MX & the GF4MX standalone cards. However that sony doesn't have dual channel DDR either.

Thanks for the correction/clarification. Apparently I haven't kept on on graphics chipsets.

[permanent68]

Originally posted by daimoni:
I'm an avid music buyer and I encode and burn CD's all the time.

Maybe you do it rarely because you don't an internal CD-RW with your laptop... but don't speak for the rest of us.

If you had bothered to read all my responses instead of just attempting to pretend to be better than me you'd have also read I almost never use my CD ROM in my iMac, or my moms iMac, or my previous mac. The only time I use a CD rom is when I'm encoding a CD, or installing a program. I do neither on a daily basis.

- Rob

[Eug]

So "shared" means it just uses system RAM for the graphics? I knew they did that back in the old days, but I didn't realize anyone did it any more. I thought maybe it referred to some other scheme.

It's OK for ultralights for a couple of reasons.

1) Windows XP does not use anything like Quartz Extreme. 2D on a PC is still fast with integrated graphics.
2) It uses less power.
3) It's cheaper.
4) It's saves space and weight.
5) The ultralights are targeted to the business user on the go, who generally won't want to game on it.

That said, I don't like laptops with integrated graphics. Hard to argue with a 3 lb laptop though.

but integrated graphics aren't completly outclassed. The nforce 1 and 2 compare decently with GF2MX & the GF4MX standalone cards.

Well, first off, this is an Intel integrated video setup, not an nForce, and secondly for a desktop an ultra low-end Geforce4 MX is nothing to write home about (but it's fine for a work computer). You should also note that for adequate performance out of an integrated nForce setup you need a very fast bus speed. Many such setups have not been config'd for fast bus speeds.

---

Ca$h, a lot of us use our optical drives all the time. Don't get p!ssy about it.

[permanent68]

But I'm saying a lot of people (in fact, MOST people I know) don't use their CD roms on a daily basis, so I think its fine. Besides, if the computer weighs 3lbs (or in my case, 2.98 lbs beeyatch), who cares? Its small enough to lug around the CD rom if you ever needed it (which is never).

- Rob

[nvaughan3]

Originally posted by permanent68:
If you had bothered to read all my responses instead of just attempting to pretend to be better than me you'd have also read I almost never use my CD ROM in my iMac, or my moms iMac, or my previous mac. The only time I use a CD rom is when I'm encoding a CD, or installing a program. I do neither on a daily basis.

- Rob

I think his post was in response to you "speaking for everyone" instead of yourself.

[The Godfather]

I say: the combom drive in the 3-lb Vaio is extremely welcome. I'd be able to burn more MP3 CDs for my car

And watch DVDs without making a circus act.

[Link]

I think it's freaking awesome. Is it my imagination or does it have internal dvd-rw?

Sweet.

3lbs too *drool*

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by permanent68:
How do you use your CD rom all the time? I almost never use mine... in my iMac... in my old mac... or my Sony viao.

- Rob

PS: It doesn't have a docking station.

If you had DVD+CDRW, you would use it 5 times as much probably.

[Cellery]

The lack of optical drive in my Sony SR-17K hasn't bothered me for the 2 1/2 years I've owned it. The only lousy thing is that the hard drive is extremely loud and needs replacing, so it's time to check eBay for a bootable external drive. I actually wish that there were more laptops without optical drives, as I'm not a heavy optical media user and the resulting weight and form factor gains are excellent.

[cenutrio]

I would go for the PB12". It is a no brainer...

They have refurnished ones at apple store for very competitive prices.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Link:
I think it's freaking awesome. Is it my imagination or does it have internal dvd-rw?

Sweet.

3lbs too *drool*

Its a combo drive, not a DVD-RW. I don't think there is a DVD-RW option for the sony.

[eep!]

Originally posted by DaedalusDX:
EEP!

You rang?

[permanent68]

Originally posted by Cellery:
The lack of optical drive in my Sony SR-17K hasn't bothered me for the 2 1/2 years I've owned it. The only lousy thing is that the hard drive is extremely loud and needs replacing, so it's time to check eBay for a bootable external drive. I actually wish that there were more laptops without optical drives, as I'm not a heavy optical media user and the resulting weight and form factor gains are excellent.

Hell yeah. How much did you pick yours up for? I got mine for $800bucks. Sweet deal, awesome little computer. Everytime I start using it in public people ALWAYS stare, and sometimes they come up to me and ask questions about it. Usually cute girls, not that it matter (getting married in under 1 month).

- Rob

[itai195]

Looks like a nice machine. I'd rather get the 12" PB because, well, it has a 12" screen and it doesn't have integrated graphics/shared memory. For those wondering, shared memory is a bad thing, there's a reason why PC enthusiast sites lovingly label Intel's integrated graphics chipsets and shared memory systems as "graphics decelerators."

Personally, having an internal optical drive on a laptop is a MUST. I use mine all the time, for software, music, backups, and games. More importantly, I use it enough that I'd have to carry an external one with me 90% of the time anyway.

[Cellery]

Originally posted by permanent68:
Hell yeah. How much did you pick yours up for? I got mine for $800bucks. Sweet deal, awesome little computer. Everytime I start using it in public people ALWAYS stare, and sometimes they come up to me and ask questions about it. Usually cute girls, not that it matter (getting married in under 1 month).

- Rob

About $1200, definitely a good deal and I'm surprised it's lasted this long. Surprisingly, more people ask questions about it than my PowerBooks.