The quest for a perfect laptop is difficult. I’ve owned and used many laptops, including a previous Sony, a Compaq, a Dell, and an IBM ThinkPad T41. Of those, the ThinkPad has been by far my favorite. I have only some minor complaints against it, including the misplaced Ctrl and Function keys (with FN on the leftmost corner, and the Ctrl key to the right), as well as the weight. The ThinkPad T41 feels big, takes a lot of room. Granted, it is not huge by any stretch of the mean, but when you’re traveling with everything in your backpack, the T41 takes up a lot of precious space in the bag. Besides, the T41 does not fit into a small messenger bag, and is a nuisance as I fight to get myself off the 4 train at Grand Central during rush hours. The T41, weighing at five pounds, while not heavy, certainly make your shoulder really sore as you trudge up and down Ploshad Lenina in Tomsk trying to find a hostel with a free room! (Why do I need a T41 there you may ask? With a V3 RAZR and Beeline GPRS, I get GMail access even while riding in a bus in the middle of Siberia!)

I decided I needed a lighter laptop. I had originally considered a Sony VAIO PCG-TR3A. The PCG-TR3A had a lot going for it, including a 1 GHz Pentium M, 40 GB of drive space, 512 MB of RAM (with only 508 MB usable, since all Sony T series uses the main memory for video instead of using dedicated video memory), a DVD-ROM/CD-RW, 802.11 b/g wireless support, 10/100 Ethernet, RJ45 phone jack, an incredible 1280x768 10” screen, and weighing in at only 3.11 pounds with the battery. The downside for this thing is the awful color (white!), the weird keyboard layout, and that stupid, useless webcam taking up space and weight. If I’m spending over $2000 for a laptop, it better be perfect. The TR3A, alas, was not perfect.

Which brings me to the Sony VGN-T350 lines. The T350 is the successor to the TR3A, and adds some new features.

Physically, the T350 is even slimmer, and come in a far more attractive silver-dark grey case.

The processor is now an ultra-low voltage 1.2 GHz Pentium M, with 2MB L2 cache, and accessing the memory via a 333/400 MHz front side bus. That’s right, the bus can run at either 333 or 400 MHz, and is switchable via Sony’s control panel applet. Why would you want to run the memory bus at a slower speed? It conserves power, and gives you longer battery life. Unfortunately, the system not only needs to be rebooted, but completely shut off for the switch to take place.

The HD is now 60 GB, instead of 40 GB. The DVD-ROM has been upgraded to a dual layer + and -RW DVD burner! This is a huge plus.

On the wireless side, the new system now has Bluetooth support, as well as a built-in tri-band GSM GPRS/EDGE modem. The computer actually comes with a Cingular SIM card preinstalled—the SIM slot is behind the battery. Of course, to use Cingular’s EDGE service, you really need to spend $80 a month on their unlimited data plan.

A huge improve for me is Sony’s reversion to a standard keyboard layout, with full-sized Backspace, Shift, and Enter keys. I cannot for the world understand why IBM, Dell et al, all feel that they can screw around with the keyboard layout with impunity. IBM’s misplacement of the left Ctrl key caused me an endless amount of grief as I kept hitting the Fn key instead of Ctrl. Dell’s Inspiron 700m has an insidious keyboard with shrunken <, >, and ? keys, causing me to hit period when I want the comma, and the slash when I want a period. Oh, did I mention the Dell 300m? The keyboard literally bends as you type on it. Perhaps I have been spoiled by IBM T41’s metal-backed keyboard, but Dell laptops has by far the crappiest keyboards I’ve ever had the misfortune of using. Incidentally, the VAIO T-350 keyboard feels good and solid. I have no complaints what so ever.

Now, back to the T-350. This laptop comes in two series, the L and the P/L. The only difference is that the VGN-T350/L comes with Windows XP Home Edition, and The T350P/L comes with Windows XP Professional Edition. The P/L cost on average $100 more. Why would you want Windows XP Professional? If you work in a corporate environment, XP Pro is mandatory, as the Home Edition does not let you log on to a domain. Pro also has a single user remote desktop service, file encryption capabilities, automated system recovery, as well as simultaneous support for multiple language IMEs. I highly recommend that you spring for the XP Professional edition. The automated system recovery itself is worth more than the $100.

The T350 package comes with only the power adaptor, a battery, and the computer. The instructions are minimal. No install media are provided. Rather, an image of the drive is provided on a 5 GB recovery partition set aside. You are asked to run a Sony utility to burn a set of recovery DVDs on your own. I highly recommend that you do this. There are good reasons for this, other than being able to reclaim that 5 GB of space… for reasons I will give.

The system comes loaded with crap—I do mean crap, such as the AOL icon and installer files, a trial edition of Microsoft Office 2003, trial editions of Norton Anti-Virus, and various spy-ware removal programs. Remove the stuff you don’t want. I practically removed everything. Do NOT, however, remove any Sony programs, even if they seem useless. This will take you a good hour!

And for goodness sake, do NOT remove InterVideo’s WinDVD5 for VAIO, nor should you install any other version of WinDVD! This is because the T350 comes with a set of DVD control buttons near the power button that is HARD WIRED to run a DVD player/media application called VAIO Zone. It is a pretty nice program, but it seems to rely on a custom version of InterVideo WinDVD5 codec, because if you uninstall WinDVD5 for VAIO, or install WinDVD 5 (the commercial version), or install WinDVD 6 or 7, the VAIO Zone program breaks! And no more playing Виа Гра (a music group from the Ukraine—for more info, go to google.ru and search for Виа Гра) DVDs in a little icon while I write this review! So don’t touch WinDVD5 for VAIO. Oh, and you did image the machine, right?

Also included with the machine is a physical wireless on/off button which controls the bluetooh, WiFi, and GPRS/EDGE modem. The system has a SmartWi application, which automatically switches from WiFi, Bluetooth, GPRS/EDGE et al. This works pretty well, so that Internet Explorer can be set to use different proxy settings depending on which WiFi or GSM 3G network you’re accessing. Unfortunately, this SmartWi application isn’t too smart, and does not accept proxy scripts, only hard coded proxy server settings. Nor does the SmartWi app support any 3G network other than the Cingular one. What should I do if I want to use T-Mobile, or when I’m in Europe or Asia? I sure hope that the Sony GSM modem is not locked to Cingular as a provider. I suppose I can always use Bluetooth and Motorola’s PhoneTools to use my V3 as a GPRS/EDGE modem.

Do not think that you can get away with a clean install of XP. Even if you have the Windows XP Professional SP2 volume license edition install CD, you can’t get everything working. The Sony VAIO website do not include all the drivers, or even the correct drivers. The wireless driver on their website is for the wrong hardware. The USB hub driver is missing, and I cannot find it. They do not include any installers for the necessary VAIO applications, and certainly not VAIO Zone, leaving the DVD buttons on your laptop useless. Furthermore, they do not include an installer for the SmartWi utility.

This seems to be a trend for laptops and systems in general. Every company wants to include their own proprietary app, and none of them wants to include the installers. And ALL of them, save IBM, include things like AOL and trial versions of an entire slew of useless crap. Does Sony really think that a buyer of a high-end portable with a built-in GSP 3G modem will want to use AOL?

Oh, this system also includes a Sony memory stick reader. I do not know a single person with a memory stick. I really wish the guys at Sony would come to their senses and install a SD card reader.

Other than the above gripes, the system is really about perfect. The display is amazing, with two slight flaws. First, the bottom of the screen seems to be a slightly different brightness than the rest of the display. Set your system background to white, and look at the bottom. This seems to be a problem with the TR3A as well. The display is also very warm, though a quick calibration with Pantone Colorvision will solve this. I suppose it is really too much to expect a laptop manufacture to color calibrate their displays to D65 white.

Due to the small size of the screen, as well as the high resolution, you will have a hard time reading the text. I recommend you go to Display Properties, select the Settings tab, clock on the Advanced button, select the General tab, and set your DPI setting to 120 DPI. Then go back to Display Properties, select the Appearance tab, click on Advanced Apperance, select the Active Title Bar item, and set it to 19 pixels. This will make the text larger, without distoring the icons in your Start menu, or the task-bar. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for a lot of web sites, many of which have an annoying habit of specifying absolute font sizes in terms of pixels! But hey, nothing’s perfect.

The battery seems to do pretty well. With regular usage (no wireless), you can expect about 4 to 6 hours (if you crank down the brightness). If you’re using the wireless with max brightness, expect about 3 hours.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2199
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 10 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50