SONY B1-XP review - HP/COMPAQ NX7010 review

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Sony B1-XP Review & HP/compaq nx7010 review
ATTENTION: lots of useless info included in an attempt to make this review detailed enough. I haven’t found much on those two laptops on the net from a user point of view so I thought I should include everything I noticed.
Btw, English is just a second language to me. Sorry about the quality of English on this post.


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Sony B1-XP Review

Ordered from a Greek internet shop. Took 2 days to get here and it was 1587 euro including 18% vat.

CONFIGURATION
1.7 Pentium M 2mb cache
512mb with chips integrated on the motherboard. You can’t remove the ram that is. There is one free slot on the bottom of the computer to add more. Not bad I think. You can go to 1 or 1.5gb without losing any money. But a removable 512mb dimm would be a little better.
60gb 4200rpm disk.
Pioneer 8x dvdr.
14.1 1400x1050 tft.
On board Intel graphics chip.
Sony memory stick pro slot, I would prefer sd, but Sony has to sell its camera format I guess.
Only 2 usb ports, external mouse, usb disk and no ports left. Not good.
firewire port
vga out port
100mbit network
56k modem
wireless/BT I never use
-THERE IS NO- parallel port, some pros care for this!
-THERE IS NO- svideo out, some consumers care for this!

There are many things missing from the box. Shame on sony for such a policy. There are NO windows setup disks, no driver disks, no application disks, no documentation disks, no recovery disks. They call it hard disk recovery and they also call it a feature.

The system is sold in Greece but with UK keyboard and UK OS. I actually prefer English OS for windows but many users would want proper localization and keyboard even in small countries like other manufacturers do, HP and Acer at least provide that. Non localized keyboard and OS also reduces the resale value of the machine.
The hd is setup in the usual insane way. One hidden unreadable partition, One application partition, one data partition. The disk is filled with sony media players and the usual junk. Many setup folders on the disk. Including Microsoft works, windows xp sp1 (the installed os is sp2 though), driver folders, etc etc. There is a recovery feature that requires two dvds. The system takes ages to boot with all that software and the slow disk. Sony is saving 1 euro perhaps by not providing any application cd/dvds or recovery dvds and making a mess of the hdd and losing all those gbs. Nice.

I had a travelstar 7200rpm/60gb ordered separately and started to install the OS on that. But how? No setup disks, and only a sp1 I386 install folder hidden in the windows folder. Burned that to a cd, added the drivers and utils folder from the old disk root and swapped disks. Why do we have to deal with this crap? I could burn the recovery dvds I guess but I didn’t want all that media player stuff since I will use the pc for development and graphics and I want to have an option on what to include.

Installation of OS run fine. I entered serial number and on boot I discovered that the OS was not activated. My experience with HP and its provided OS disks is different since the os was automatically activated on the HPs and it never asked for a serial number. Driver installation on the SONY was also a pain in the head. I had to individually go through each device and point to the right folder and boot a couple of times. And there are many devices. And if I wanted any of the applications I paid for I either could no have them or find a installation folder in the old HD by myself. If there was one that is. I also noticed that some critical features like TFT brightness keystrokes was done via a driver and not in a hardware/bios way like other manufacturers. This means another OS would need drivers for something so basic! There is also no windows 2000 support for this machine. Sony only provides windows xp drivers. Shame on Sony again.

The machine is very light and feels plastic. And I mean a lot! An acer or an HP or an IBM feels like rock. This Sony is very flexible and you can easily push the palmrest to bend 2-3mm with a single finger and minimal force. It also does not feel nice when the lid is cloded. Not firm enough. The same applies to the tft cover. Does not look like it would survive a small drop. Even putting it upsides down on a hard surface to have access on the bottom does not feel safe. It should have a Handle with Care sticker on the palmrest where those huge buy this and buy that accessory stickers are. High capacity battery is 450 euros btw and all parts are very expensive, at least in Greece. And service is done in Belgium. And it goes to Belgium even if there is a suspected fault. Nobody touches that in Greece that is. More on service later.

The keyboard has a rubber feel and a very small key travel distance. Easy to miss keystrokes. Minimum feedback. Worse keyboard I ever encountered. It has full size though but most keyboards have full size these days. Even 12 inch laptop ones. The keyboard is at an angle which feels nice compared to other laptops. The machine is higher on the back and lower on the front. With the high capacity battery it gets even higher on the back. Fake slim laptop this one. About 3cm on the front. About 5cm on the back with the lid closed. It also has a weight distribution problem. Using two bags I have, none would stand upright with the sony. So you have to leave the bag against the wall or let it drop to the floor which looks and perhaps feels bad! Same bags are ok with Hp, IBM and Acer. The page up and page down keys are done with FN combinations which I find slow and irritating. Other manufacturers have normal page up and page down keys and home end sometimes. Some even have them with proper distribution, like HP which is very nice. Another bad thing I noticed is the way the touchpad is controlled. You have to go through the Sony software setup app to enable of disable it. Which is some clicks and not fast at all. Other laptops have a hardware key to enable/disable it right on top of the touchpad. You either loose time to go through the procedure each time or make typing errors because of accidental touchpad input.

The machine make little noise. It is also very configurable compared to other laptops with a nice util by Sony. You can really optimize noise/performance/tft bgrightness etc on this machine. The vent on the right serves as a keyboard warmer in the winter nights, but the machine does not get hot, even under heavy torture. There is a lot of noise coming from the travelstar 7200 disk, worse that it was on other notebooks, which makes me think the internal construction is very light and thin plastic is the main building material. The machine feels great on your lap. About 700gr less weight that the typical 3kgr laptop. Not that big, no vents on the bottom, no vents on the back, no heat on the bottom under normal use. The vent on the right side was an excellent choice. You can put it in any surface and it will still not get hot.

The speakers are small and tiny sounding and positioned really close to each other. They do sound a lot better than any Acer I have used but not as good as some HP or Toshiba business laptops or most laptop replacements. There is not much stereo since the speakers are close to each other. The sound output is very silent. No noise or static or anything. Very good for anyone on headphones or doing audio via monitors. Tried it through my Dynaudio BM15A (2,000 euros street price) active studio monitors and it was as good as pro audio cards to my ears. I had very bad experience with acer on this matter. The soundmax circuit on this machine does a good job and is well supported by the motherboard electronics.

The dvdr is excellent. Pioneer is a great 8x unit. Very fast even in small files. I think it is the best dvdr I ever encountered on a laptop. The sony cheap construction shows though (this laptop made in Japan but they do make stuff cheaply there these days!). The case rattles when the dvd-r accesses data. Not on dvd videos, just on data and when putting the dvd in or accessing small files. Holding the dvd cover stops the noise. Sony should take care of this problem. The DVD is on the right, which is very annoying if there is not much space and you use a mouse. It also falls too low when opening. Scratches the surface of the desk literally and sticks to the surface if using it on a soft surface, like a soft matress.

Graphics. The onboard intel did surprisingly well in empiric 2d tests. Adobe Illustrator redraws etc. But it is very slow for 3d as we know. Not a gamer’s notebook.

The Sony comes with a two prong adapter with a nice thin cable. Great for transport. But there is one problem. There is no grounding of any kind. Opening the cd and touching a metal part proved that. You can feel current. The power in my area is not very good and the grounding in most houses isn’t good either. Does not look very safe for using as a main pc on AC. The notebook end of the power cable is a joke. It bends left and right and has terrible fit. You would think they would design it to be flexible in order not to brake. But I think they designed it to break and be a mess. It easily unplugs itself if you pull the cable a bit.

Battery life is ok. About 4hours under light use and 2:10 when viewing dvds at medium volume and medium brightness setting.

And now…

TFT screen.

This is the worse TFT I have ever seen. I have seen other 14.1 models and they are not that good compared to bigger ones with more design space, but this one is terrible! Viewing angles are minimal. 14.1 screens usually have about half the vertical viewing angle compared to 15.4 wide but this one gets the unusability (no such word, I know) prize! I would say the vertical viewing angle in NEGATIVE. That means that in the perfect position the top of the monitor is like 40% darker than the bottom. Bottom too light. Top too dark. You have to tilt the TFT to opposite directions to fix these problems and that’s what I mean by negative viewing angle. The CCFL that lights the tube is just one like on 99% of the laptop tfts today, but it is also very badly positioned. Too close to the screen border. In black screen you see bleed that reaches the center of the screen. I have never seen such a bad case. On other notebooks it is just 1-2cm. I confirmed this with another laptop of the same model. My laptop screen also proved to be problematic in uniformity. The right 1/3 of the tft did not light up properly. This resulted in red whites and darkness in this area and text was a lot harder to read also. This showed fully in a grey background. Sony must have terrible quality control. The design of this series is definitely bad also since the non problematic sony I saw also had the same viewing angle problem. Even in simple apps like Word, using the laptop was hard since the bottom to top difference in lighting made things hard to read. Moving my head 2cm vertically would completely change the screen image. And even the perfect angle was still terrible. A friend who fixes tfts for a living says that this is a very bad design. They tried to minimize the size of the tft cover and this made them put the CCFL too close to screen. So it bleeds 10x compared to the usual 15.4 screen and also has viewing angle problems since the filters that diffuse the lights from the CCFL do not work optimally. From a normal user point of view, viewing a dvd on this sony series is a joke. The typical 4 yo kid will ask what that white thing is on the bottom! And if you do graphics haha! My guess is that depending on where the color is (height on screen) it will appear +-20% in brightness. Unusable. Horizontal angle is very bad also. Viewing a dvd with your girlfriend (boyfriend?) is a very bad experience. You would have to put your heads really close and still have a bad picture because the 10cm off center you would both be would spoil the image even more. Combine that with the CCFL bleed on the bottom and the terrible black of this tft… The TFT had no dead pixels, but I wouldn’t mind those compared to the left side uniformity (specific unit) problem and the general uniformity/viewing angle (all sony b1-xps) problem. The text is not very readable at the bottom 80% range of its brightness control.

I returned the monitor immediately. The shop tech did not see the problem, but you imagine the professionalism and knowledge of the low wage stuff of an internet store that only needs to know how to use a screwdriver to assemble 400 euro PCs. The store did accept the return since the condition was excellent and the hard disk/apps were as shipped, and were very nice with a complete refund which I did not accept, since I ordered an HP to cover the amount of money paid for the Sony. They did pay for sending and getting it back and there was no restocking fee or anything similar. One week later the HP arrived.




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HP NX7010 review, 1500 euros including 18% vat.

The laptop was chosen based on the TFT quality this time, after a lot of research. It is an ancient Compaq/hp platform that changed 3 model names and 2 company names in its history and will probably be replaced in 2-3 months, used to be called Compaq x1000, then hp7010. An HP wsxga+WVA nx7010 PG588EA.

Configuration:

Pentium m 1.6ghz 2mb cache (1.8ghz +20gb hdd was +500 euro)
512mb ram (in two dimms), for 90 euro I traded for 2x512 ones.
40gb 4200 disk. for 80 euro I traded for a travelstar 60gb/7200rpm
4x HL-DT-ST DVDR GWA-4080N,
Ati 9200/64mb with powerplay energy saving
1680x1050 wide tft wth wide viewing angle.
3usb
1 firewire
parallel port
infrared port
svideo out
vga out
sd memory slot
100mbit network
56kmodem
wireless, BT perhaps, didn’t check speed or support on those.

Everything was in the box like it should:
Windows xp pro sp2 english cd
Windows xp pro sp2 greek cd (Both versions and an option.)
Windows xp pro security updates cd
Application/drivers installation dvd
Documentation cd
Windvd creator cd
Bluetooth cd
English + greek user guides with lots of info

The system is made in china and comes with localized keyboard, euro sign, Greek accents etc. It’s nice that HP supports fully supports even languages spoken by only a few millions. When you first open it offers you a selection of which OS you would like to install, English or greek version. After that the software is installed automatically while you watch a progress indication bar. It takes about 40 minutes for everything to complete. One funny thing I noticed. The hp box comes with a huge sticker mentioning 8 to 10 dead pixels are normal. This is strange since I have never seen a single faulty pixel on a hp laptop. During the automatic software installation the laptop shows a low res gray box with a progress indication bar and some info. In that box, there are 4 pixels that have a darker gray colour, randomly place within a few mm and another one on the left. I immediately though that it was a bad case of faulty pixels case. Dead pixels on scaled resolution would appear darker gray. The dark grey pixels were randomly placed and could not be part of the simple gray box design on the screen. Then a surprise came. The screen res changed and the box appear on the upper left screen and the strange faulty pixels were still on the same position on the bitmap and on a different screen position, so they were part of the bitmap. A joke of HP’s software staff? Not a good one!

The default installation is very simple. If I were to keep the hdd I would just keep it. The 40gb disk was a single partition. Only a few gb were used by os and Norton antivirus and windvd. No extra software, no sales stuff, no demos, no full screen flash based media player. Clean! Very good compared to other laptop models with multiple partitions and all that. Very professional of them I would say. Removed the 4200 disk and installed the travelstar 60gb/7200rpm. Booted with the windows xp sp2 disk provided, formatted partition via setup and installed. It didn’t ask for a serial number. The machine bios has a nice boot menu function. You can select internal disk, internal dvd, or external usb drive. You can also enable an option that lets you choose on boot with a menu and a timer for the default option. Very nice indeed. After boot, windows xp was automatically activated. No wasting time on Microsoft activation. Another plus. Then I inserted the application/drivers recovery dvd. It allows you to install any hardware or software application provided by hp by simple choosing all or unchecking some. Even a single one! Options! No preinstalled pack recovery junk like other manufacturers. No manual installation. Everything in installed automatically in a single step. Fast and with options. Very impressive. I unchecked Norton antivirus since I use another version and let it do its magic. On boot everything was perfectly installed and configured. I inserted the XP security updates cd and installed English version. Boot again. Then installed my apps. I can’t think of a better way to provide a machine to the final user. Auto installation for novice users and options for the rest. Excellent.

The machine feels solid enough. Very well built. Kind of think but nothing impressive. The screen is a bit fat and the machine is 3.5 real cm with the lid closed, counting from desk to its highest point. Access to parts is easy. Two screws on the bottom for hd. One for ram. Two screws and four sliders for keyboard/ram access. Battery slides in with a single fastener that clips with spring into place. Other laptops have one spring fastener and another manual one which is a mess in case you forget to secure the manual one. The tft cover does not twist much and it feels very solid. The cover is always cold to the touch, dunno if it is metal or just metal paint for some sort of protection. But it is dark grey and professional looking.

The keyboard has a plastic finish which I prefer since it behaves much better in hot weather. The travel distance in enough for good feedback and I find it easy to type. As good as IBM perhaps or slightly inferior. It has a standard block of insert/home/pgup/delete/end/pagedown, x2 keys, like on a normal desktop keyboard. But smaller. 3/5 height and 9/10 width perhaps. Better than other solutions I have seen, especially if you do programming and text editing a lot. It has 2 volume buttons and one mute button with led light. The touchpad is nice in its feel. It has a hardware button on top to disable/enable and is also lighted to show status. Looks like HP respects out time and convenience. It also has a scroll area on the left. It is a relative one which makes it very easy to use. From the first moment it felt like I had been using it for years. You scroll finger up or down and it scrolls your window. No skips, no jumps, nothing like some attempts from other manufacturers. There is FN key combination for brightness and some other stuff. I noticed the brightness combination works even before xp is loaded so it must be hardware controlled. Nice if you need an OS other than windows xp.

The speakers have a JBL pro label and are at the ends of the keyboard which gives some basic stereo positioning. They are nice but not much. Not very loud either. They do try to minimize distortion though. A test proved that they don’t go low (120hz barely) but they do not have the usual low end distortion that usually comes with other speakers. Output is noise free and loud enough. It uses a soundmax solution and the output sounds good via monitor headphones and studio monitors.

The machine makes some noise under normal use. On the always on setting and cpu at max running demoscene demos that stress cpu and vga to the max, it is a big loud for a centrino when it switches to max speed. It does not stay long there though under normal use. Just a few secs. The machine is about 3 kilos and kind of heavy so it is not a good laptop for using on your lap. It also has a fan bottom vent that also vents to the back of the machine and another 2 small and wide vents on the bottom, so it is not very safe for using on a mattress or a soft surface. I would use a wide book and put the laptop on top or a very thin piece of wood if I did that a lot. The laptop also gets cold on the bottom, on the vga (9200/64) and cpu area, but not on the dvd,hd,battery area on the front. That is nice for preserving battery life I think. It also makes it comfortable under any load. It didn’t get any warm on keyboard or palmrest.

The dvd-r is a model I have never heard or has its bios info changed by HP. It is reported as a HL-DT-ST DVDR GWA-4080N. HP say it is dvd+R+RW, but easycd says it supports –R –RW also. I burned 4x and 8x dvd+r at 4x speed with excellent results. It also appears to be fast enough. It gets a full data dvd with audio files to disk at 10minutes. It plays dvds silently enough and burns with very little noise.

The 9200 is not a very fast card, but could suit some gaming now and then if you are not a big gamer. It is excellent at 2d redraws. If you use graphics apps it will do the job perfectly.

The HP comes with a big and heavy 3 prong plug and a fat (similar to a normal desktop PSU one) cable from the plug to the converter. Then a smaller one to the notebook. It makes some packing effort if you have a small laptop case. It is grounded though and recommends grounding. No current on metal parts of the notebook. It also fits perfectly on the notebook end. Hard and tight. The way it should be.

The TFT screen.

I did some research to get to this laptop. Mostly friends who work professionally in graphics. I do some graphics since I develop audio plugins and their GUI and I wanted a laptop that would be as good as a desktop TFT. Which looked close to impossible from my experience with various flavors of normal, high brite, sony black, etc. I discovered that two monitors were said to be the best for the job. A friend said I should get something from HP with +WVA on the tft specs. +WVA or wide wiewing angle is used by Samsung to describe two of their notebook tft models. One is 1680x1050 and the other 1920x1200. Both have very wide viewing angles, two of my friends said they estimated it to be double the one of normal notebook tfts. Practically an horizontal angle that is as good a a normal desktop tft lighted with two CCFLs (notebook only has one CCFl on the bottom) and a vertical viewing angle impressive for a notebook. HP uses +WVA on their specs of this model so I thought it would be this tft. I’m not sure but it looks like it. The brightness also is 185nits on those two tfts and this also supports my assumption. If you are interested in this, check the Samsung wiseview pdf that lists the specs of their tfts. Other manufacturers have similar models. Anyway…

The 1680x1050 TFT on this HP is fantastic. I have lots of experience with high end desktop TFTs and some laptop TFTs. I use an EIZO 885 and have seen/used most 20 inch and larger tfts including Apple Cinema, Formac etc. And I’m talking excellent TFTs, nothing like a Samsung 21.3 which has numerous flaws. Professionally quality tfts recommended for DTP, CAD and photography.

The color is excellent. Although all laptop tfts are 18bit ones, this one does the 24bit thing so impressively I could never tell. It also is tuned from the box to be typical warm white, like we would want on DTP. Very readable text, despite the large res. At 50-60cms it looks excellent in all parts of the screen. The screen uniformity is entirely symmetric and I don’t believe one CCFL could light a TFT any better than this. The text is readable and contrast is preserved even at the minimum brightness setting. It does not burn or wash at high brightness levels like most desktop/laptop tfts. Impressive piece of engineering. The black has the typical laptop problem, but the problem only appears on the bottom 10mm of the vertical size. A typical good notebooks tft bleeds much more. The filtering is excellent, and it looks nice in darkness or light, something you won’t find in sony black and similar tfts. No mirror effect at heavy light. You can use it with a window on your back. Enough brightness for daylight. Good image at low brightness settings for other times. Sharp text, very good vectors, vivid color, unbelievable contrast ratio for a laptop tft. Small icons and tool palettes are clean. You can do Photoshop work on this machine or do web development. The horizontal viewing angle is so wide, you can use the laptop to present something to 1 or even 2 customers without problems. Not the usual moving the laptop nonsense that is.

It is probably a very bold statement, but I do prefer this tft over the desktop eizo. It is simply better and the smaller angle of vision to cover the full screen contributes to a lower eye strain. The projected pixel size is about the same with a 20inch 1600x1200 tft and they have almost the same number of pixels. By projected I mean the pixel size when the monitors are in such a position as to cover the same angle of vision. To make this simple, this monitor at 45cm is like a 20inch at 70cms. Not exact figures, but close. If you are experiencing eye strain although your monitor is clean and you can see every detail in it, the reason is angle of eye movement and strain in your eye muscles. Move the monitor back and it will go away. As simple as that.

The HP TFT has no burned or dark or light pixels. Tested with pure colors ( R G B), black and white. Very impressive for a screen with 1.764 megapixels and 5292000 subpixels. Even companies that offer 0 pixel warrantee do not offer that for such high resolutions. Only in 1280x1024 and smaller models.

DVD viewing size is the same with a 17inch tft or a 18inch crt since it is a 16:10 15.4 inch monitor. I didn’t notice any problem with tft speed on dvds and fast demos. In windows there is noticeable lag when dragging windows like on most laptop tfts. A wild guess would be 30ms response time.

1680x1050 can be a problem if you are shortsighted or growing old. This screen is remarkably readable for a screen of this dpi though. Sony b1-xp 1400x1050 has a little larger pixel size but was very hard on the eyes. Dpi should always be judged combined with screen quality.

Battery life is nice. 4hours under light use and 3:00 when viewing dvds at medium volume and medium brightness setting. At minimum brightness setting (room with low light) it gets to about 5 hours. At high brightness it runs down faster but you would expect that. Battery takes 2 hours to charge from 0 to full capacity (not that this is recommended) when the laptop is off. Nice amber light turns green to show battery is fully charged.

Almost all laptop inputs are on the back. Only power is on the right to the back and headphone out on the front. I like it there but you might want it somewhere else if you use powered speakers. DVD is on the left, where it should be.

HP accessories proved to be affordable enough. This HP is very well supported from its own users and problem free since it has been in the market for quite a long time. There is even an independent board with thousands of posts from users of the Compaq/hp platform and info with pics on typical things, like replacing cpu or hdd and adding ram or completely disassembling it for anyone who needs that short of info or just photos of it.

http://www.x1000forums.com/

Compaq X1000, HP nx7010 and HP zt series appear to be the same platform. Any info on problems on this machine is outdated and usually was solved 1-2 years ago with a bios update. I was surprised to find such info in some fake sales/user review sites and commercial user review sites.

NotebookReview is a nice site btw. Keep up the good work.

 

Be my guest[ ] I thought a couple of hours were not much if I could save someone the week I lost by not having enough info on the laptops. Buying a laptop is like a blind procedure these days and formal press reviews rarely give the right info. This site helps a lot.

 

hey PaulNew, thanks for posting these rather extensive reviews in the forums! You obviously spent a lot of time working on these and it's great you made the effort as the number of reviews out there for these laptops is limited.

do you mind if we were to post these reviews on the front of the site in the next couple of weeks so more people could see them there?

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

I agree that formal reviews in the press rarely scratch the surface and all tend to sound the same after awhile. So it's thanks to people like you willing to take the time to post on this site that there exists an alternative! We'll get your reviews on the front of the site so they're more visible in the next few days.

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

hi there,
I am looking for a recovery disc for a nx7010 if anyone can help....will pay!!!!!