The Picturebook for some of us...
Written: Jan 31 '03
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Pros: Small, Useful, Great Display, Decent Battery Life, Built in Camera...
Cons: Expensive, No floppy or CD-Rom included, Not enough ports
The Bottom Line: I would recommend purchasing this specific model of Picturebook if you can find it used and cheap. Buy the newer picturebooks.
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| ColinM's Full Review: Sony VAIO C1VN PC Notebook |
Well, I bought this laptop about 2 years ago now. I splurged and got i when it first came out. Mine happens to be a Europe only model(C1VE) but this is exactly the same of the US(C1VN). The main reason I opted for this laptop was because of its size. Nothing on the market was even close to being as small as this AND as fast. At the time 600mhz was a respectable processor speed, that has changed. Here are the specs:
Crusoe 600mhz CPU
128 MB RAM
12 GB Hard Drive
8.9" TFT Widescreen
Approx 3 hour battery life
1 USB Port
1 Firewire or I-Link port (same thing)
Monitor out
VGA out
Line/Headphone out
1 PCMCIA Slot
I am not sure if that is everything, but that is the important stuff. Well at the time this was quite a quick laptop, nothing special, but it was and still is useable for anything I want to use it for. This laptop is still my primary computer. The only thing I have done since buying it is upgrade the memory to 192 MB, upgrade the hard drive to 60 gb, and upgrade to Windows XP Pro. I do have to say this is quite an expensive laptop considering it does NOT include any external drives of any sort. I had to buy a USB floppy drive for 80 bucks and a CD-Rom drive for 200 bucks. I guess I can't complain, because I really never have to use either. I simply use a memory stick for anything like that.
I highly recommend this laptop for someone that travels like I do. The battery life is quite good, the speed of the laptop is excellent, and the quality of the build is top notch. I have dropped this laptop, spilled water on it, and taken it apart to do the upgrades I mentioned before. All of these things, yet it is still running strong and looking great. My ONLY problem with it is the fact that the screen is quite small. It is widescreen, but some programs run at 800x600 by default and the resolution of the screen is 1024x480, so problems do arise with that. The built in camera is great. The quality of the pictures isn't great, but it's about the same as any webcam.
Programs such as Microsoft Office and Excel run great on this laptop, games are another story. The video card is an 8mb AGP card that is built into the laptop. It is OK at best for 3D games. Quake 3 and games like that are playable but only at 640x480 resolution and with dimished quality. 2D games that do not require a 3D graphics card work great though. So if you want this laptop for gaming, look elsewhere.
Now the conclusion. In my honest opinion, buy something else. There are much better laptops out there that are only slightly larger now. I am not sure if Sony released a faster version of this laptop, but if they did perhaps that one could be considered. Whatever you do, try the laptop in the store before buying it. That will make all the difference in what one you like best.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1900
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Screen Size: 10 inches
RAM: 128
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
ColinM
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Member: Colin McCarthy
Location: East Greenbush, NY
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 7 members
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