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It is now time for me to post a review of my latest (but already old) VAIO purchase:
Sony's PCG-Z1SP
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It's now been 3 months since I bought this notebook and I'm overall pleased with it. The pricetag is somewhat expensive but is worth it considering I often travel by train and plane. The weight/size/power ratio remains very decent compared to the old Dell Latitude crap I was using before the Z1 (SP is my model).
I won't tell you the +Intel Centrino +isn't a good thing. No. The new Pentium M (1.5GHz) is blazing fast with all kinds of applications (it is supposed to be as fast as a 2.4GHz Pentium 4-M and I can say that it surely is).
As far as I am concerned, I do like the Sony Z1's keyboard and mousepad. The smallish right shift button is a very minor detail IMO so that I am very used to it. Where is the point? It seems many people are handicapped (not to say disabled... No offence here).
The ALPS GLIDEPOINT® touchpad (which I suspect to be the MultiKey Series one) is smooth and hardly never freezes or whatever weird behavior some complain about (beware of the pad's hotspots).
I sometimes use the built-in wireless and it works fine for what I do with it but I reckon it could be improved a wee bit (the 802.11g to come with the Z2 series?).
The 512MB amount of memory is a must-have these days and could be paired with another 512MB but that currently fits the bill the way it is.
The +'S' shape +or +wave design +is cleverly thought of and useful to fit the connectors in.
The screen simply is magnificient (the SXGA+ resolution fits perfectly the +14.1" LCD +screen size) all the more because it is very bright and crisp (even when full contrast has not been set up) although some people complain about the darkness of Sony's notebook displays. Sony has always been recognized to offer high quality displays (CRT/LCD/TV). I often watch DVDs when on planes or trains and have no complain whatsoever.
The +ultra-slim DVD/CD-RW combo +is very useful as well to back up data on the move (to gather lots of large data files from customers for instance) and watch movies when travelling, of course.
I have never used the +infrared +port on my previous Latitude so I do not bother it missing on the Z1 at all, it is even welcome to have skipped it (in my experience, nowadays hardly nobody I know of uses this kind of connection, all the more because of WiFi and BlueTooth recent developments). IR will tend to disappear anyway rather soon than later, so why bother?
The only +PCMCIA port +is good enough for my taste as it will also tend to disappear in the near future (it is only useful for plugging a 802.11g WiFi card in, that's all). iLink (or FireWire) and USB 2.0 make PCMCIA ports more and more useless nowadays, a single one is enough. On the same matter, a pair of USB 2.0 ports is enough as well (I always use one for my Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer mouse receiver and the other either for the external Sony DVD+/-RW burner (at home only) or scanner or printer, but I a
