Crash City here we come
Written: Mar 26 '00 (Updated Mar 26 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice Screen....and wallpaper
Cons: Memory errors, API errors, not very light, gets very hot
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| khunkwai's Full Review: Sony VAIO XG9 PC Notebook |
I'm not a fan of notebooks, but I was press ganged into buying one as my job now requires that I travel a lot, so we looked around and checked out various Laptops and various models of Sony before selecting two of these for myself and my boss.... and from there on in things went down hill.
First off we needed to set them up to work on our NT network when we are in the office, it appears that half the files needed to make this a painfree operation were missing from the Office 2000 installation as Outlook would not communicate with the Network, removal of office 2000 and a reinstallation was required to get that to work... okay I thought now I can get on with my work....yea right.... the system seems unable to do anything once I get more than 4-5 programs running, that's something like Outlook, The Bat (email), IE5, Word and Homesite and then it just starts to give me Out of Memory errors every time I click a button, maybe I just go real lucky with the installation of my Sony but my Boss is getting equally irritating messages, maybe this is the "Non Multitasking" installation we have?
Iget Win AP 32 errors on various pieces of software that were installed post purchase, namely Homesite 4.5a, which runs without error on my home desk top (win98) on old office Desktop (Win NT 4)....
Positive things to say, sure it is a tad lighter than the old Toshiba Tecra that I used to sign out for those rare trips before hand, and yep the DVD is fine, although locked to Area 1,so needs the BIOS flashed to clear that, being as I live in Asia Area 1 ain't much use to me, and although the DVD should allow for up to 4 region changes before locking I sure can't find an easy way to do that.
The PCMI slots are very badly positioned and get SUPER Hot, I use an IOMEGA Click drive which likes to be left in the drive so I can do continual backups of my work, yea right in the Sony the Clik Disk will fry if left in the drive , even if it's not clicked in!
The screen is excellent I will give them that, although when ever I try to drop to 800 by 600 resolution the whole thing goes to pot and looks horrific, again there doesn't seem to be any easy way to solve that so I'm stuck in 1200 res....
My Sony came with a whole batch of real unrequired software from flim ediiting software to Sound Forge...just junk to remove as far as I'm concerned, is this standard, I have no idea but both Sony's we bought came loaded with junk.
The VAIO mouse is fine, if a tad small and it has a scroll wheel which is the best invention since the mouse, the built in scroll bar system on the VAIO looks like a cool little gadget when you buy the computer but you'll soon find it's easier to just set up all your shortcuts on the toolbar and not use it at all.
So all in all I have to say I was very dissapointed with the purchase, I think we'll just format the thing soon and put NT4 on it and hope that all the problems are software related and not from the machine itself...oh the Sony wallpaper is kinda cool as it changes colour based on the time of the day..
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
khunkwai
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Member: Khun Kwai
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Married with Kids living in Bangkok Thailand. Travel, Computers and Sports are my interests
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