Sony VAIO TX650P/B Notebook

Would be the best if not the fragile screen

Strengths: Small, exceptional battery life, great screen

Weaknesses: Fragile screen due to flexible screen cover, no hard disk protection from shocks.

Summary: I almost bought this computer, but decided to go to Best Buy to actually see it. I am very glad I did: the Best Buy's floor sample had many glass cracks on the LCD panel. I wondered why, and the answer is actually simple: the screen is made very thin and while the "polycarbonate" cover touted by Sony is strong in terms that the cover itself does not break, at the same time it is very flexible and unfortunately the glass inside the screen is not flexible, so the LCD glass cracks when the screen is bent a little.

So, I imagine the glass would often break if you put your computer inside a bag with something else that could bend-in the cover or if you drop it or you are not handling this thing like a baby. None of the other computers I saw in Best Buy had the cracks on LCD panels. So, if you ever decide to buy it, I would highly recommend buying an accidental damage protection, which adds $300-$500 to the price depending on where you buy it.

I also looked at Portege R200 from Toshiba. The battery life of this computer is not as impressive as Sony's and it lacks the optical drive. On the plus side it weights the same and has a much better protection of its Polysilicon screen - it does not bend and the Polysilicon screens are known to outlast the regular screens by many years. Sony might also use polysilicon screens, but unlike Toshiba they refuse to tell which components they use, which is unfortunate because you don't really know what you are buying and how long will it last. One of the reasons I looked at Sony's TX is that it might use the polysilicon screen from Toshiba, based on Toshiba's announcement of mass production of LED powered 11.1 screens with the same resolution as in TX. That screen would work very well if not the critical design flaw with the screen cover that bends easily.

The Portege's hard drive also seems to be very well protected: they used a smart sensor that detects abrupt laptop movements and parks the hard drive's head to avoid damage to the disk. Not only that, it is also installed in a shock absorbing material. The hard disk and the screen are the two components that break sooner or later 99% of the time and Toshiba wins the durability test against Sony hands down. So, regretfully, while Sony's TX looks great, I just can't waste my time and money on something that would break in a few months.

As far as the WAN option goes, the Cingular's web site sells the PCMCIA cards for free when you sign up, so having the WAN option built-in does not make much of a difference pricewise.

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Sony TX650P

Strengths: Small form factor (portability), Battery life, Instant On Features, Great resolution

Weaknesses: Making you believe that since its so small, it's fragile

Summary: Total Cost (including shipping) - $2081.95

Build & Design:

The build seems pretty sturdy with the lid and outer portion of the body made of carbon fiber. The keyboard bezel on the other hand seems a little bit weak because there is some flex in the bottom left corner. I suppose it’s due to the hollow memory card readers. But overall the build quality is above average. The design well what can I say… it’s a Sony Vaio, such a beautiful machine.

Screen:

The Vaio TX650P comes with a 11.1” 1366x768 resolution screen for the perfect widescreen viewing. The viewing angles is pretty good vertically, but not some much horizontally due to some glare from the x-brite technology and there is also some light leakage due to Sony’s use of LED backlights for the LCD panel, but it doesn’t bother me. Other than that the screen is excellent and luckily I had no dead pixels

Speakers:

The TX650P comes equipped with 2 speakers running above the keyboard. As you would expect from any notebook, they are weak. Be sure to buy yourself a pair of headphones. Luckily Sony equipped this notebook with the realtek HD audio chip.

Processor and Performance:

The TX650P comes with an Intel Pentium M 1.2ghz ultra low voltage chip. It’s not the most powerful chip on the market, but it gets the job done. You wouldn’t expect this chip to run graphic intensive games either because of the embedded intel GMA900 graphics chip. But who buys an 11.1” notebook for gaming?

Heat and Noise:

I haven’t noticed any noise. The fan runs pretty quietly and efficiently by my standards, but I’m coming from a computer desktop with 6 fans running so I don’t know how reasonable my opinion is. I haven’t noticed any heat in the palm rest area, but there is a considerable amount of heat being generated from the side and bottom vents. It’s not hot enough to scald your bare skin, but it’s enough to be annoying.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

The TX650P comes with a pretty small keyboard. All the keys are about 10% smaller than standard notebook keyboards, but what can you expect from an ultra portable notebook? Lots of people complained about the shallow key depths, but it just takes a little bit of time to get use to so it’s not a big deal.

The touchpad is fairly small and I would suggest you to just buy a notebook mouse unless you can get use to the touchpad. Generally I never liked touch pads even if it was big.

Input and Output Ports:

- 2 x USB 2.0 ports

- 1 x IEEE 1394 port

- 1 x Ethernet port

- 1 x Phone jack

- 1 x Audio Out (headphone jack)

- 1 x Audio In (microphone jack)

- 1 x Memory stick reader

- 1 x SD card reader

- 1 x VGA port

- 1 x DC Jack

- 1 x PCMCIA Card type II

- 1 x Bluetooh 2.0 + EDR

- 1 x DVD-RW/CDRW

Wireless:

On the TX650, wireless is achieved through an intel 2200BG wireless card. The wireless card can connect to either 802.11b or the faster 802.11g network. The signal strengths have been good so far so no complaints in this department. The TX650P also comes equipped with a internal Bluetooth card so you can attach various Bluetooth enabled devices. It’s also equipped with a Cingular WWAN modem so if you have a Cingular data plan, just pop in your SIM card and surf the net anywhere you can get a cell phone signal.

Battery:

The battery life on the TX650P is amazing! This is one of the reasons why I bought this notebook. I get about 7 hours of battery life when I turn off my DVD-RW, setting the brightness of the LCD to 5 (still bright enough), and turning on Adaptive mode for the processor.

Operating System and Software:

The TX650P comes equipped with Windows XP Professional edition. The notebook also comes bundled with a lot of junk software which you can just delete or do a clean install of windows XP. Bad thing is Sony doesn’t provide you and recovery discs; good news is you can make your own through a special partition Sony included on the notebook so you could make 2 DVD recovery discs or 8 CDs. AFTER you do this, then you can do a clean install.

Conclusion:

I love this notebook. The TX650 comes with everything I need in a notebook PC. This is a TRUE ultra portable.

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A true go-anywhere office for business people

Strengths: Light, thrifty with the juice, and just as powerful as some of its larger cousins, I am very happy with this purchase overall.

Weaknesses: Would be the best if not the fragile screen

Summary: The connectivity is superb, and once you get the hang of it, the VAIO connections manager software makes it incredibly easy to switch from one internet connection to another.

The screen is exceptional for its size, and the keyboard works as well as can be expected in such a small space. But Sony could have improved the array of outside controls. There's a set of buttons above the keyboard which is supposed to let you operate the machine as a dumb-terminal personal DVD player without booting up the whole system, but it's never worked 100% properly for me. The touch-pad is, if you'll pardon the expression, touchy. And the volume and mute buttons are fiddly.

The tight packing of so many components does cause a little interference in the built-in speaker--this disappears when connected to external speakers, but it kind of makes it useless as a personal DVD.

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Worthy for its great performance and portability

Strengths: regualer size keyboard, light weight, light screen

Weaknesses: expensive

Summary: I had been looking for a lightweight notebook for 2 months and decided to go for Sony TX650P. As many said, the biggest two selling points of this computer are the great portability and long battery life. At 2.7 lbs., I can easily hold it in one hand and do not feel the weight carrying it with my back bag. It stays relatively cool (compared with my IBM T41), and the battery life is superior compared with other "travel" notebooks. Using with my GPS sensor, the battery can last about 4-5 hours instead of 1.5 hour for IBM T41, which it is good for most trips. It is small without compromise, as it has the must-have DVD burner and full size keyboard, the two big differences from those cheaper Dell ones. The keyboard is great to type on (maybe not for someone with large hands) and it has all the features you would expect in a laptop. The screen is amazing for its sharpness as a Sony product is always. I noted there are some bad reviews about the screen fragility. Yes, the screen is rather slim and looks easy to break. However so far, I have had it for 3 weeks and been moving from place to place, including my small suitcase and it is still in perfect condition. The only thing, which does not satisfy my expectation, is the screen size. When I really played with it, I found it feels even smaller than 11.1” because of the wide-screen. However, it may be unavoidable for its amazing lightweight.

Overall, this beauty is an expensive one but it is worthy for its great performance and portability.

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Great Machine

Strengths: weighs less than 3 pounds, great screen resolution, touchpad is excellent and includes scroll function, eject button on top actually works, supports SD and Memory Stick media, silent with low heat

Weaknesses: Cingular wireless broadband is dog slow--about dialup speed most of the time at 49k. Sony should have gone with EVDO broadband. No Reinstall/Recovery Disks. Very Tacky Sony.

Summary: I love this machine. I'm a small woman with small hands and a bad back. I travel a lot, doing IT related work and need a powerful lightweight laptop on the go.

The keyboard is not quite as large as the Fujitsu alternatives, but the difference is hardly noticeable for me.

The screen doesn't seem vulnerable, I take the usual care with storage and transport and have had no problems.

The builtin Cingular was a waste of components. I'll be switching to an evdo provider soon, and will use the pcmcia slot for that receiver. I hope the builtin Cingular wireless interface doesn't interfere with the other receiver.

I did check out the Fujitsu, Toshiba and IBM alternatives, but the TX is more sleek, efficient, quiet, more features that work, and for once, Sony cut down on the Bloatware.

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Slick Laptop with Power

Strengths: - Durable with long battery; - Light weight with capabilities - Highly portable with all DVD RW and picture viewing functions.

Weaknesses: - cover is thin, so be careful - small fonts for heavy reading/writing

Summary: It is a very good laptop for its quality. I have studied for long time to see what is the best on the market for personal use:

- Multimedia

- portability

- long battery life 5.5-6 hrs, (spec says 4-7.5 hrs)

- DVD burner (all formats, e.g.. DVD-R, +R, RW etc.)

If the laptop gets so heavy, what is the point to have one. However, the font size is a trade-off of overall size and weight. I read Laptop magazine that review on this (last month issue). It had help me to decide on this one vs THICKPAD Z60 which was also one of my choices. But it weights about 5.1 bls. Just about the same cost $2000 and same features. (slightly faster according to the specifications, but who cares). The important things about laptop are the points above that makes it a true laptop. The battery life is depending on how you use it (still doubles an average laptop).

I do recommend this model, but you should really evaluate a laptop based on your personal needs. The XT670P has 1G, but if you want to upgrade it to 1.5G, you have to replace the existing 512M with 1G to get 1.5G. And the price is $250 more between the two models (mine is XT650. I will buy a 1G to upgrade to 1.5G (only one slot for upgrading). It will only cost me $85 for the 1G. Everything else is identical. Well, you do the math then. There is a cheaper model of this same kind (XT630P), if you just want to have a DVD player, not a burner($1400 or so). Do online price comparasion, it saves you a bundle.

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Amazingly Small, Amazingly Light, Perfect Mobility!

Strengths: Very light and very well made of good solid quality components. Very light and mobile, highly connectable with various wlan, wan, bluetooth

Weaknesses: Processor is only 1.2, and screen is very thin, but still made of carbon fiber material.

Summary: 2007-02-07 12:59:26 This is the perfect computer for the person on-the-go. It even has a DVD+r/rw drive! which is simply useful in such a small portable notebook. Can handle most all computing tasks with ease, I plan to upgrade the memory all the way to max out its performance, but even with 512mb, it runs very well. This is the perfect computer if you have a good desktop computer and need a mobile computer to have to take around for various business and computing tasks, obviously, 3d gaming is not a real possibility on this kind of computer.

otherwise, i am very happy with this computer!!

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Initial impressions are WOW

Strengths: Light weight Great screen

Weaknesses: The keyboard is not full size so it does take some getting use to

Summary: Initial impressions are WOW, this thing is so light and small. Out of the box the TX is beautiful. Nice design and super slim. Start up is a bit slow but after initial boot-up it is great. Screen is clear, a bit cramped for long reading but super sharp.

I am so far thrilled with my purchase.

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exellent product

Strengths: performance

Weaknesses: any

Summary: The screen is exceptional for its size, and the keyboard works as well as can be expected in such a small space. But Sony could have improved the array of outside controls. There's a set of buttons above the keyboard which is supposed to let you operate the machine as a dumb-terminal personal DVD player without booting up the whole system, but it's never worked 100% properly for me

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Just ok

Strengths: NA

Weaknesses: NA

Summary: So far this computer is ok...nothing too spectacular. Then again I've only been using it a few weeks and haven't had much time to play with it...

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Sony TX650P Lightweight Laptop

Strengths: This computer is extremely light in weight. The screen is extremely thin which reduces most of the weight. The built in cingular wireless is great as it doesnt require me to carry around an air card.

Weaknesses: I wish this laptop had the option to use verizons EVDO. Since the screen is so thin the image on the screen wasn't the same quality of larger sony laptops.

Summary: This laptop is outstanding for its weight. The main reason i bought it is because i do lots of traveling, and it became too much to carry my larger Sony. This one i can just throw in my case and take it with me anywhere due to its weight. The screen wasn't quite as good as other Sony laptops i have used. I attribute this to its extreme thinness. The image just appears to be somewhat grainy looking at certain angles.

The mouse buttons for the built in touchpad are on the very edge of the laptop, but you adjust rather quickly once you know where to place your hands. Overall though, i would say this is a great laptop for anyone who travels.

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Sony Vaio TX Series

Strengths: The fact that this laptop weighs less then 3 pounds is a great advantage. It also has bluetooth technology and WLAN. The built-in DVD Burner is great since you can burn DVD-r on the go.

Weaknesses: The biggest weakness on this laptop I believe is the fact the the screen is very thin and could break very easily. The 1.2 GHz does take away from it's speed while transfering data.

Summary: Iam very happy with my Sony Vaio TX series. The weight and size make it a very easy laptop to carry around. Iam also very happy with all the programs that come with it. I would have love to have seen the laptop have more then

1.20 GHZ.

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