Good, but limited companion
Written: Jul 13 '01
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Pros: Size, Weight, iLink, HD, Processor, RAM
Cons: no serial/parallel/ethernet built-in; no optical/floppy built-in
The Bottom Line: Buy it only if you understand that there are few built-in ports and are ready to carry accessories.
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| rs500's Full Review: Sony VAIO SR7K PC Notebook |
As i began travelling more and more, i knew i needed a smaller laptop because 6 or 7 lbs feels like a ton after walking long enough. The SR7K is less than 3 lbs and i definitely felt the difference. Though it had no internal optical drive or floppy, i knew i could purchase those accessories and connect them to either the PCMCIA, USB, or iLink interface. And since i was saving so much space in my bag, i could afford to carry some accessories. The left side houses a single USB port and a slot for Sony's proprietary MemoryStick. The right side houses the iLink port, modem, PCMCIA slot, and JogDial. It has a 12 gig HD and 128 megs of ram.
Processor
Intel's PIII 600/450 is a Speedstep processor which means that it can ramp up or down depending on the power source (battery or AC) to conserve battery life. There's a handy utility included to allow you to control when you want the processor's clock speed to step down (which can also be set to never). Though i didn't benchmark it, it felt responsive and quicker than my old Celeron 500 laptop that it replaced.
Display
The screen measures 10.4" and displays at a native resolution of 1024x768. Though considered small to some, the display is bright, clear, and crisp. I found it very easy to read without straining. There's also a configuration utility to control the brightness of the screen based on the power configuration to conserve battery life.
Software
The included software was overkill to me, but there were some useful utilities (like the power management). The jog dial manager was very useful. After removing some of the utilities that it was configured to launch, i was able to use it as a slick, scrolling start menu. The jog dial can also be used as a scroll wheel in documents. Since the laptop has an iLink (aka firewire) interface, Sony bundles some image/video capture software which worked flawlessly with my JVC miniDV camera.
Conclusion
I love everything about the laptop except for the lack of built in accessories. I could forgive the lack of ethernet since i could simply use a PCMCIA card that didn't stick of the chassis, but the single USB port handcuffed me and carrying a powered hub can be inconvenient at times. I could also forgive the inclusion of a floppy drive since i rarely need one of those, but i'd suggest getting an external cdrom drive. Though it's more expensive, i'd also suggest getting one of the Sony VAIO cdrom drives. Not only does it match, you have to use one of the Sony VAIO cdroms if you ever need to use the recovery cd's since the BIOS doesn't initialize USB at bootup
Knowing this, buy it only if you don't mind carrying extra accessories at times.
NOTE - the form fields required that i choose a type of internal storage and i selected ZIP since there was no choice for "no internal storage"
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
Screen Size: 10
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: Zip Drive
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
rs500
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Location: Houston, TX USA
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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