GRX650 1.8 GHZ, 512MB RAM, 20Gig drive
Written: Dec 29 '02
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Pros: beautiful display, jog dial
Cons: keyboard is clacky, no microphone, no infrared
The Bottom Line: If you want a big display, look it this and the Toshiba Satellite. Unless your going to be plugged in most of the time, the VAIO is your best bet.
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| lancerkind's Full Review: Sony VAIO GRX560 PC Notebook |
VAIO
Love the bright display when plugged in. The display allows for better angle of views than any other laptop I've owned. But Sony, let me choose to show off my beautiful display at the expense of battery life.
The batteries don't discharge in the right order. It appears that it is trying to discharge them equally rather than using up the charge in the second batter first. Discharging the second batter first is better because when I randomly plop in my cd drive, the internal battery will have the most charge left and I'm sell likely to miss the second battery.
The Jog dial is interesting, I think I like it, but I think the software for it can use more usability testing. It takes a while to understanding. A useless and annoying default setting is that the dial makes a beep every time it is moved- No sane person is going to use the jog dial like this. The ability to pull down menus with it doesn't seem to work smooth.
With notepad, I can’t get to the edit menu. With other apps like Word, it seems like once I get into the menu, then I can't scroll through it without again needing to select scroll mode. As soon as I get into a menu, I should be able to scroll by default. Keep up the work Sony, you should be able to turn this into a useful tool. A game built around it would be useful for teaching people to use this perhaps too complicated device. (Like Solitaire in Win 3.0 taught DOS users how to use a mouse.) Make it work with the simple cases first (scroll bar manipulation), then add in menu navigation, then other features. It's pretty overwhelming in its current incarnation.
The materials used in the jog dial could be better for affording greater traction (perhaps a rubber coating). It's a bit too slick and pressing too hard causes the jog causes accidental 'clicking'. Grasping the laptop lid can cause the lid to deform a bit causing the jog to accidentally click, but no big deal, the jog beeps back in complaint to it's rough treatment.
The extra video software rocks! I love MovieShaker! And the laptop is certainly going to influence my choice of purchasing a Sony brand DV camera so it can just dump the data into the laptop. Having the software to do DV editing is a great teaser too!
The PowerPanel was hard to figure out. It used to dim the screen display when running on battery and go into hibernate whenever the lid was closed. What I tried to do is adjust the MS Power Panel but it gets overridden by the PowerPanel. The fact that happens isn't clear and most people are going to be looking to make changes in the MS Power Panel because that is what they are used to using.
Things I miss but can live without: built in microphone- I can no longer verbally instant message people at a whim; IR port- I can no longer synch my palm using the IR port.
A physical button that mutes the speakers- this is nice because I can fearlessly work in bed or in public places and the laptop is physically incapable of making a sound.
Not having a GeeForce 64MB card was a bit of a bumber too. But the 32MB Radeon seems reasonable enough (I don't game on it).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2100
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
lancerkind
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Member: Lance Kind
Location: Redmond, WA 98052
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
A computer scientist by day, a writer by night, and a snowboard instructor in between.
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