Compare Prices on Sony VGN-P530H/W
I've always been a fan of ultraportable computers, and I've owned a few, which include a Motion LS800 tablet, Raon Everun, Vaio TX, Vaio TZ, and an Asus 1000H. So, my review is based upon my experience with those machines. The Vaio P, in my notion, is the ideal combination of portability and functionality, if typing is an integral allotment of your computing needs. I bought 2 of them (one for me, one for the wife) as soon as they were announced on the Sony website, and have been using it for about 2 weeks.
PRO'S:
(1) Hide RESOLUTION: One divulge that I have always had with any ultraportable (outside of the Vaio TX and TZ) has been coarse camouflage resolution (e.g. 1028 x 680), which has always lead to lots of scrolling and/or zooming-out. The resolution on the Vaio P is, in one word, fabulous. EVERY webpage is viewable in its entirety on the cover, as is EVERY document I need to read or edit. The downside is that text ends up being VERY miniature on the hide, but calm legible to me (I type documents in 10-pt Times Recent Roman font) . However, there is a personalization option available that allows you to design text/icons 125% larger than normal, which makes things worthy easier to watch. My wife wears glasses and has pain reading the text at normal settings, so she uses that mode and it works well for her.
(2) PORTABILITY: Okay, let's not kid ourselves here. This thing will NOT fit in your shirt/pants pocket (unless you're wearing very baggy cargo pants), but it will fit in a purse or any tiny satchel. Weight is negligible, even with the extended-life battery attached. Portability is a titanic thing for me in my profession (medical student, MD in a few months), and this machine can easily fit in the pocket of my white coat when I'm on the recede.
(3) THE KEYBOARD: I type extensively as portion of my profession, and having a usable keyboard is a component that has always been missing from any computer that I could carry on my person. My Motion tablet and Everun were useful for reading on-the-go, but essentially useless for typing anything beyond a short phrase. My Vaio TX/TZ have gigantic keyboards (I've typed thousands of pages on them), but the machines themselves are too big to carry on me at all times.
Let me also catch this opportunity to point out that, in comparison to the Asus 1000H, the Vaio P is not unprejudiced another crappy netbook. The keyboard on the 1000H, for many reasons, is a low-quality component that definitely shows with heavy utilize. Any typing mistakes made with the Vaio P are genuinely my hold keystroke mistakes, which was not the case with the Asus (90% of the time, it was honest the junky keyboard causing mistakes) . The right-shift key on the Vaio P is truncated, but its placement to the left of the arrow keys makes it a mighty more natural motion to hit, and something that you can become accustomed to without causing you to alter your typing accuracy on a normal-sized keyboard, which was really impartial impossible with the 1000H (that had the factual shift key placed to the just of the arrow keys) .
(4) FUNCTIONALITY: It is a fully-functional PC, first-rate of running any program you might need to speed, given that you're not trying to utilize this as a gaming PC. I have installed Windows 7 on my Vaio P, which has made it noteworthy more efficient at running multiple programs simultaneously, as well as improving stability. I would highly recommend this upgrade for anyone purchasing this machine.
CONS:
(1) VISTA: This machine should have near standard with XP. Vista boot time is horrendously tiresome, even from hibernation, and installing Windows 7 does not fix this pickle. My other ultraportables running XP were able to return from hibernation in about 20-60 seconds. The Vaio P takes probably 2-3 minutes. Maybe I'm a miniature impatient, but I want my computer to be ON when I turn it on. The integrated instant-on technology is not terribly useful to me because I generally need to spend programs other than Media player or Firefox when I fire my machine up.
(2) NOT USER-UPGRADEABLE: As I understand it, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard and thus not upgradeable. 3 GB of RAM would have made the VAIO P distinguished faster, and would have alleviated quandary (1) I described above, and with 3 GB of RAM, Windows 7 would not even be a necessity because it would then be able to bustle Vista acceptably.
(3) STANDARD BATTERY LIFE: Sony touts 4 hours of life with the standard battery, which is of course a lie. It's more like 2.5 to 3 hours with hide brightness turned down to 1 or 2 (at which it is calm very grand readable/viewable), with WiFi on. I also have the big capacity battery, which takes it to 6.5 to 7 hours at the same settings. The immense capacity battery adds maybe 1 to 1.5 cm of height to the machine, which is something of an eyesore, but I will do the sacrifice because the added battery life is worth more to me than the 0.2 lbs (not noticeable) and increased size.
(4) LACK OF TOUCHPAD: This omission is well-documented in other reviews; the pointing stick does what it is intended to do and it does it well -- however, it does NOT replace the touchpad or a mouse. Most people are already well-aware of this verbalize before purchasing the Vaio P. One thing I would liked to have seen instead is the optical mouse like on the Raon Everun, which is an intuitive and exceptional pointing way that is easier to spend than the pointing stick.
*CONCLUSION: the Vaio P is an exceptional design of unique engineering that allows its owners to have productivity at a level comparable to that of a laptop while away from home, or when lugging a laptop case is impractical -- thus, I must stress that it is intrinsically a COMPANION PC. One should not request this to REPLACE a distinguished PC, nor should one anticipate using this as their laptop 100% of the time, 24/7, because it simply would be foolish and needlessly sad to do so. I would earn the analogy of comparing WiFi to a T1 connection -- given the choice and availability, no one would determine WiFi over a T1 connection, but the convenience and mobility of a WiFi connection are advantages that the T1 cannot match. In the same procedure, the Vaio P offers unmatched portability and convenience, but its purpose is of a different nature than the necessary laptop/desktop -- so, as long as you maintain that inequity in mind, the Vaio P should enhance your productivity and live up to its effect of being a "lifestyle" PC.
I have venerable few other laptops and desktops. But this was my first try with "netbook." This products has a vast features, style, and size and that's one of the reason I bought this netbook. There are some pros and cons about this and I'll let you know to encourage you on purchasing this item.
pros:
1. The Size: size of this product is impartial astonishing. There are few other netbooks came out but this is the smallest. Very handy and portable. I mean who's gonna beat the size of 9.65" x 4.72" x 0.78" and the weight of 1lb 4.8oz? The only thing is, it's not going to fit on your hip pocket, like it advertised. But It will fit on your hand fair splendid, or for girls, it will fit on your little purse.
2. The resolution: Most of the netbooks came out with the hide resolution of 1028 x 680, but Sony made this 1600 x 768, which provides more comfortable views for users. Although, the 8 gallop hide is kindda too dinky for that resolution, you might feel tired after looking at the camouflage for long time.
3. The instant booting system: The instant booting system (based on Linux system) takes about 15 seconds to boot up, you can browse websites, explore movies or listen to musics. You can also boot up the computer to windows mode from there. This comes very handy.
Cons:
1. Sony fair had to design it with the Vista. The performance goes dramatically down running Vista on this product. You can also downgrade it to XP, which makes VAIO P mighty faster to construct, but you will derive lags watching movies because there's no GMA 500 chip location driver for XP. The best intention to employ VAIO P is to upgrade its operating system to Windows 7, overall performance was very nice. Although, it might be slower than XP, you can spend GMA 500 driver and overall performance is trustworthy.
2. VAIO P is using 1.33GHz Z520 Intel Atom Processor. This chip space makes VAIO P not able to acquire as hasty as other laptops, but for netbooks, it is elegant rapid.
3. The sign of this is about $1,000 when most of netbook's mark is around $500. I don't consider VAIO P performs twice as worthy as other netbooks, but the effect of it is more than twice as noteworthy as other products.
4. HD (Hard Disk) performance is remarkable lower than SSD (Solid Set Disk) performance. I deem it'd be great better to resolve SSD model if you want to hold this. Awful about it is the capacity. It only holds 60GB for HD, and 64GB for SSD.
Overall, This is a netbook that I personally concept of best. I believe this is definitely not for the main computer, but colossal for sub-computer. It comes very handy and portable, so if you are looking for a sub-computer (or laptop), this is one of the best.
I was one of the first people to seize one of these and have been using it since the beginning of February. (Bought the VGN-P530H) This is my main computing blueprint that I exhaust 12-16 hours a day and I admire it, but it is not for everybody.
I disappear a lot, nearly all of it internationally, and often in economy. This is a laptop that you can expend on the smallest of tray tables, even with the seat in front of you fully reclined. I bought the leather pouch accessory and often carry the laptop around in it. It's gargantuan to unbiased be able to bound by my desk, toss it in the pouch and go to a meeting and then pull it out if I need it. Since it is only about the size of a notepad, it's easy to carry around everywhere, to situations I wouldn't want the bother of a laptop bag.
The laptop appears sturdily built for the rigors of road warrior disappear. Since February, I've flown more than 50K miles with it, including a 2 week vacation in Japan where we visited 11 cities. It's taken its aesthetic portion of bumps and doesn't prove it. I originally bought this for my wife but began using it as my absorb when my company provided Dell E4200 broke in its 3rd week (the monitor backlighting electronics burned out) . While the monitor lid is not thicker than other models, it seems to be more resilient because of the smaller surface dwelling.
The Vaio P is visually glorious. When using it in the executive lounge in the airport or on a plane, people will often approach up to ask what model it is. The cloak quality is unbelievable, especially when you mediate they packed 1600x768 pixels into that runt hide. You'll need 20-20 vision or better to be able to comfortably read this camouflage, which will be a deal breaker for lot of people. If you're unsure, try one out in a store before buying. Setting the icons and text to a larger size can benefit. One of the things that I don't like about the laptop is that it does not have and lower resolutions that are in proportion. For example, the next lower resolutions are 1024x768 and 800x600 which appear distorted since they are out of proportion compared to the native resolution. There are times when I'm in a bumpy car or somewhere else with a lot of motion and expend the 800x600, but it would be nice if they had something more proportional like 800x400 or 1024x500.
Love the keyboard and the pointer stick (I can't stand track pads) . The suitable shift key is unusually sized and placed, it drove me nuts for about 2 weeks until I got primitive to it.
The power adaptor is miniature. There are no ports for Ethernet and VGA on the laptop, you need to crawl in the included dongle for that. The dongle is fairly microscopic and clips on to the power adaptor brick. The only thing I didn't like about the dongle is that it does not have puny LEDs on the Ethernet port that exhibit the plot of the Ethernet connection. This is a useful features for travelers - to know more quick if the port you plugged into is live or not.
The laptop came with Verizon 3G, which has a nice prepaid option where you can capture service for $9.95 a day, without entering into a contract, which is nice compared to buying WiFi access in hotels, since you can employ it anywhere you have coverage for the day. (I didn't gain any coverage holes on my trips to southern California, Chicago, Northern Virginia, Baltimore and Miami) However, since most of my depart is outside the US, where the card does not seem to work, this is a mostly useless feature for me and it would have been nice to be able to trade it for something more useful like, GPS.
A few things I didn't like:
The main bellow we had with the laptop was bad performance with Windows Vista. As installed, it is unacceptably lifeless for regular everyday expend. We installed the beta of Windows 7 on the laptop and it is working comely. Installing Windows 7 on the laptop is a poke, the only drivers I downloaded were for the video and the network. I have been running with this laptop as my main computer for the last few weeks (on Windows 7) and the performance is not an reveal opening web pages, outlook, powerpoint, excel and word at the same time. Things will open to dead down with too many (e.g., 8 Firefox windows, outlook, 2 powerpoint presentations and 3 excel sheets) - closing a few windows will bring help the zippiness. We didn't catch the SSD and I wouldn't bother. I support a rapidly 32GB SDHC card in the SD bay to increase the storage size since 64GB can be a tiny limiting.
The battery life is not tremendous - with WiFi on, I bag less than 2 hours battery life. A microscopic more than 2 hours with the WiFi off. The power adaptor outputs a non-standard voltage: 10.5V, so you will not be able to expend it with nearly any universal power supply or universal laptop batteries (like the ADC) . Together with the rude battery life, this is a serious dilemma on trips.
A word to the wise, contrary to some misleading information on the Vaio website, this laptop does *not* reach with GPS or any navigation software. I was very disappointed about this, as the website intro to this product implies they have it and the sales collect that sold me my laptop over the phone confirmed that the laptop definitely does advance with GPS. To the best of my knowledge, none of the P-series laptops Sony is selling in North America advance with GPS. We came very cessation to returning the laptop for this reason alone. Another thing to be wary about - the sales procure tried to sell me an Ethernet/VGA dongle when the laptop already comes with one.
The WiFi card does not attend 5GHz WiFi N - this is disappointing in a notice recent premium laptop since this has been available on many laptops since the middle of last year. Also, the laptop does not have an easily found serial number on the bottom. This may sound nitpicky, but it's a plight for those of us that visit buildings that require registering the laptops with a serial number before entering and upon leaving.
In summary, this may sound like a lot of things not to like for someone who loves the laptop, but I wanted to be complete as this laptop is not for everybody. I cherish the smaller size and that for such a little size it has such a nice keyboard, shroud resolution and reasonable performance on Windows 7. More memory, a faster processer and a larger disk would be nice, but I can gain by. The bigger jam is the battery life and I'll probably be getting an extended battery in the future to solve that. The Vaio P is also reasonably rugged - my last 2 laptops were a Dell E4200 and a Sony TZ-200 both of which developed mask problems and needed repair on my first or second inch with them (and neither suffered any essential abuse) . I'd give it 4 stars, but am docking Sony 1 star for being misleading about the GPS.
